COORDINATORS: Henry Marx, Johannes Breit, Julia Hörath (Humboldt University Berlin) and Guillermo García Crespo
CONTACT: henry.marx@hu-berlin.de guillermo.garcia.crespo@uab.cat
SUMMARY: Labour was one of the central problems of the 20th century. Following the First World War, labour and unemployment took on a central role in the political discourse throughout Europe. Following the acute crisis of the liberal-capitalist order in the 1920s, authoritarian movements started to gain traction with their promise of a new social order. Their vision included a reconceptualization of labour. Not longer a commodity to be offered and sold on a labour market, it became an integral contribution to the national community.
Mass unemployment destabilised regimes throughout the continent. The promise of labour for the masses was supposed to mobilise for the new social order and served to pollster its legitimacy. In this quest for labour for the masses, it became a determining factor for participation in the new national project. Pre-formulated visions such as the exclusion of women from the labour force as well as radicalized ideas about the perceived unwillingness to work as a reason for being cast out of the new social order began to rule national politics and social discourse. Labour re-defined as a communal and national duty, transformed questions of unemployment from a socio-economic problem to a potential crime against the community. Having previously been subjected to pressure and certain forms of repression originating from state-institutions, the unemployed, those “unwilling to work”, were now the target of new and radicalized forms of violent persecution.
The panel wants to address the conceptions of labour in a variety of dictatorial regimes in the 20th century. Which part did labour play in the quest for legitimacy of the social order? In which way did the regimes organize labour? Which connection existed between mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion with the issue of labour?
KEYWORDS: Labor, Dictatorship, 20th century.
LANGUAGES: English
MOTIVATIONS, OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY: There is no denying that labour is a central category in modernity. The question of how labour is organized in a society often determines the political categorizations of said society. Dictatorships are too often compared solely under political aspects such as the organization of power, rule and state bureaucracy. However, dictatorial regimes are too often regarded as historical abnormalities, which dealt with specific problems of their own. Our intention is to show by choosing a social-historic point of view that while dictatorships might have found their unique answers to socioeconomic questions, these problems are universal as in they challenge all types of regimes.
We hope to highlight that by going beyond the realm of the organization of power, the perceived abnormality starts to lose its validity. In having to address universal problems, dictatorial regimes might find a unique answer but remain well in the realm of the typical with regards to problems addressed itself. Furthermore, the question of the organization of labour serves as a suitable point of comparison between dictatorial regimes pointing out important similarities and differences in the process. With this, we aim to find an innovative new way of approaching dictatorships by themselves as well as their comparison within the field of history.
NOTE: there has been a merge with panel “Businnesmen and potical power: the interest group system in the modern state”
SUMMARY: From the historiographical tradition, the study of entrepreneurs and organizations created to represent their interests has often characterized by ideological prejudices and reductionist conventions, as well as the interest social scientists put into other groups, as happened with studies on the labour movement. It is true that the interests of entrepreneurs and employers were often present in these works, just as happened with the works of synthesis of the different historical periods, although business associations did not reach the status of object of analysis privileged until recently.
The situation changes since the mid-seventies of the last century, and does it behind the contributions of the economic history and of the new methodological tools incorporated by the sociology and the political sciences (the renewal of Theory of the State and the study of corporatism systems in democratic societies would be two of these contributions), thus paving the way for the emergence of historiographical studies, now have the employer and their representative organizations as protagonists. Finally, the development in the last decades of this field of research, linked to the emergence of new investigations, has contributed to a greater complexity in the analysis of the business subject. Currently, the lines of research in this field focus on a number of subjects which are a guide to the issues may be present at this panel-workshop: historical analysis of the entrepreneurial movement and their organizational structures; prosopography of businessmen and business families, as well as large companies; studies on the economic elites and patronage networks; analysis of the action taken by the employer, both individually and collectively, to the centres of political decisionmaking and Administration, without forgetting the interaction with the rest of social actors, in particular, the trade unions; the gender studies and the emergence of women entrepreneurs; regional and sectoral studies; the role of the public company; comparative analysis between business organizations from different countries, etc.
KEYWORDS: entrepreneurs, business history, trade associations, pressure groups, elites.
LANGUAGES: Spanish, English, Italian, Catalan.
MOTIVATIONS: The proposed panel-workshop I present here part, as usual in these cases, the experience itself, and a series of findings that I could share with other researchers in congresses and meetings such as the one that concerns us: in a historical moment like this with a series of interesting and important developments in motion of unknown amplitude, it is necessary to continue to deepen the study of the economic elites and the role and action they exert on the political, institutional and economic development of the states.
OBJECTIVES: As regards the objectives pursued, the panel-workshop aims to be a meeting point for the new generations of historians interested in this field of study, where is contrasting the current research and provide new approaches and methodological techniques. As for the results, I consider of great interest that this seminar presents a state of the question on a subject that is making significant advances in recent years. In keeping with the spirit that animates the organization of the meeting, this panelworkshop is open to works that currently address the study of this discipline from a critical position and with a multidisciplinary, comparative and transnational character.
METHODOLOGY: This panel-workshop is configured as a space for theoretical reflection and debate, features that invite use a flexible and dynamic methodology that facilitate the exchange of ideas and the search of points of intersection between different perspectives. Therefore, a part of the time of the panel-workshop will be devoted to the brief summary of the works presented like preamble of the later dialogue, along which both participants and those researchers who decide to participate the workshop can expand and discuss the themes present in the papers presented or other issues raised during the debate
List of finally accepted papers:
- Javier AZAÑÓN GUZMÁN (Universitat de València): “Libertarians Inc.: las bases empresariales del libertarianismo y su relación con el movimiento Tea Party”.
- Sören EDEN (Humboldt University Berlin): “«Treuhänder der Arbeit» (Trustees of labor). Order and control of wages and labor conditions in the «Third Reich»”.
- Julia HÖRATH (Humboldt University Berlin): “At the margins of the «People´s Community»: «Workshyness» in the National Socialists´s Race Ideology and Persecution Policy”.
- Jaume MUÑOZ JOFRE (London School of Economics – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): “La regeneració imposible: corrupció a Espanya de la Restauració a la Transició (1875-1976)”.
- Helge Jonas POESCHE (Humboldt Universität Berlin): “Civil Servants and rich businessmen. Corruption in Germany during the Weimar Republic”.
- Gerard TOMÀS ALGUERÓ: “Caras de una misma moneda: capitalismo, modernidad y nacionalsocialismo”.
V Meeting of Young Researchers in Contemporary History 