DISORGANIZING AND REORGANIZING CONFLICT - OUTCOMES OF THE STATES LEGAL REGULATION OF THE STRIKE SINCE THE WAGNER ACT

Through an examination of U.S. federal labor law's impact on strikes s ince the Wagner Act, this article evaluates three theories of the stat e in capitalist society: the structuralist class, political class, and state-centered theories. Minimal support is found for the statist pos ition that suggests that state actors will pursue their own agendas wh en they have the bureaucratic capacities to do so, when elections are competitive, or during recession and war. The results do suggest that both structuralist class and political class perspectives are useful i n understanding the operation of law. Since passage of the Taft-Hartle y Act in 1947, the law has selectively restricted those strikes that p ose significant challenges to employer workplace authority, which supp orts the structuralist perspective. However, the law appears not to ha ve had these selective effects until after more militant factions were removed from the labor movement, suggesting support for the political class theory. The article calls for a synthesis of the two class theo ries.