the nation's economy was rapidly evolving from primarily agricultural
and locally based to primarily industrial and nationally based. It is clearly
as significant as the dramatic period of the 1930s and 1940s, which saw
the collapse and reconstitution of U.S. capitalism, the establishment of a
limited welfare state, and the achievement of global hegemony. We
cannot yet predict the outcome of our current evolution, but we know it
is driven by the transformation of technologies and the globalization of
nearly all markets.

As in previous periods of economic transformation, there are and will
be both winners and losers, not only among individuals and economic
sectors, but also among communities and regions and classes. This
transformation is often thought of in terms of the economic forces
driving it. Yet because it is a process that results in winners and losers,
that involves a redistribution of power in our society, it must also be
seen as a decidedly political process.

In the United States, a country that makes much of its claim to be a
democracy, one is tempted to ask whether these decisions are being
made in a democratic way. Yet regardless of one's interest in democracy,
any serious student of politics is obligated to ask questions about
interests. Whose interests are being considered, denied? advanced, de-
stroyed? With stakes as high as these, we would expect the fights among
groups with conflicting interests to be a central concern of our political
process. And we would expect those with the most to lose to be putting
up obvious resistance.

Previous economic transformations have always provoked large-scale
political resistance. The upsurge of the farm-based People's Party in the
1880s and 1890s, as well as the militant labor struggles of the 1930s, were
key elements in the political life of their times. Yet no comparable
movement has emerged to resist the dramatic social and economic
dislocation caused by our current transformation.

This study is motivated by the simple question, "Why?" Why was
there no major political response to factory shutdowns that often cast
thousands of workers at a time out of the ranks of the middle class into
the ranks of the unemployed, where they faced few options and had to
scramble for low-wage, low-status jobs in the new and burgeoning
service sector? To speak of the situation in terms of thousands, however,
substantially understates the problem. If one recognizes the connection
between the decline of wages and employment in the industrial sector,
and the problem of unemployment, underemployment, and low-wage
employment throughout the economy, then one is speaking of a problem
that affected 20 to 80 million workers, depending on the definition one
uses. When dependents are included, the problem encompasses approx-

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