Postwar labor power drove real wages and wage shares to postwar highs.

Evidence

Wages and labor rights continued to fl ourish throughout the decade. In Italy, the years 1970– 1977 saw real wages rise at an annual average of about 7 percent (Levrero and Stirati 2004, 2), with the wage share increasing and reaching a high of 70 percent in 1977. Similar trends were on display in Britain, where workers’ activism in the postwar decades brought the national wage share as high as 79 percent in 1975. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1553

Categorization

• XREF: This establishes the baseline of labor power that the coming Thatcher-era austerity would dismantle — the comparison point for the whole austerity-as-class-weapon thesis. — connects to: British wartime and postwar wage growth outpaced a full century of prior gains — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 359; Postwar red years gave Italian workers 55 percent of national income, an unprecedented high — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1484; Postwar British workers commanded a historically unprecedented share of national income — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1485 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: The 79 percent and 70 percent wage-share figures are striking — worth checking what these ratios mean against the decline under Thatcher and subsequent decades.

Broader Connections

• Workers’ wartime indispensability empowered postwar demands to transform the economic system #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174
• A labor market favorable to workers triggers organizing and higher wages. #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 264
• Wartime labor-mobility restrictions functioned as wage caps against workers’ enhanced bargaining power. #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 176
• Postwar Labour settlement redistributed wealth via Keynesian economic measures #expands (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1059
• International competition forced down profit rates ending the postwar boom #responds-to (0.70) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 237