A miners’ leader framed wartime labor militancy as a secession from commodity-producing capitalism

Evidence

Frank Hodges, a miners’ union leader in Britain, described the movement as a secession from capitalism: “He (the worker) wants to know the social purpose of his work; in short, he wants to feel the joy that comes to a man whose whole personality is impressed on the object which he is in the process of creating, instead of being mere plastic clay in the hands of a system which turns his whole being into a marketable commodity” (Hodges 1920, 110- 11). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 378

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The language of alienated craft against commodity production — worker wanting personality impressed on the object — is raw material for fiction about the psychological stakes of industrial labor, a character who experiences factory work as the destruction of selfhood.
• XREF: connects to: Postwar labor claims turned political out of hostility to capitalism itself — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 335; State wartime intervention fused economic and political labor struggles. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 374; Miners’ alliance with the state sealed their defeat through austerity — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 419 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• State wartime intervention fused economic and political labor struggles. #corroborates (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 374
• Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185
• Postwar labor claims turned political out of hostility to capitalism itself #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 335
• Miners’ alliance with the state sealed their defeat through austerity #complicates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 419
• Wartime state mobilization proved production relations were changeable, emboldening workers #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174