Trialectics in Michael McCarthy’s Dismantling Solidarity

Abstract

Given the comprehensive discussion of Dismantling Solidarity offered by my colleagues in this symposium, I feel liberated to focus on what I consider to be Michael McCarthy’s signal contribution to the dynamics of government social policy development, and – most precisely – the modality and impact of external pressure on the formulation and implementation of these policies. For me, then, McCarthy’s focus on the development of pensions in the U.S. system gains originality and generality because he has discarded the intellectual confines of arguments that allocate primacy to a single set of social pressures demanding new policies and seeks to trace the path that this pressure followed to fruition. Instead, McCarthy views the development and evolution of the U.S. pension system as a multi-dynamic process in which the constantly changing policy profile emerged and re-emerged from the complicated interactions of powerful actors seeking partially contradictory outcomes. I think the larger theoretical perspective that emerges from the complex arguments that McCarthy offers can be best described by the paradoxical term “trialectics.” Without ever asserting it explicitly, McCarthy sees the critical moments in the history of the United States retirement system as the (largely unintended) consequence of three interconnected dialectical relationships: the classic struggle between capital and labor – found in this text in various forms from massive strikes to maneuvering within labor markets; the contentious, evolving relationship between government and labor – finding expression in venues that include electoral campaigns and union regulation; and the fraught interactions between government and corporate management – ranging in this history from lobbying to military intervention into corporate functions. McCarthy deploys these three sets of dynamics to explain the causal structure of the major moments in the non-linear evolution pension system in the United States. To illustrate this trialectical analysis, I will focus first on the rise of defined benefit pensions (DB) just after World War II. These pension systems guaranteed a certain income (based on remuneration levels while employed) after retirement. Workers sought these benefits as part of union contracts when it became apparent that the Federal government would not increase the still-developing Social Security to assure adequate after-retirement income levels. These DB pensions ultimately became a key part of the contracts that the Truman administration mediated/negotiated/imposed on unions and management during the turbulent post-World War II period of frequently violent class struggle that animated the expansion of industrial unions. By focusing on this moment, I think we can perceive