It would be a rather contrarian faction of the capitalist class to push for the legalization of worker self-activity as did Wagner. Note also the level of third party representation emerging in Congress in the mid 30s.
So Wagner and Roosevelt represented what class exactly? Why do you think that capitalist class representatives could not support the Wagner Act as a means of channeling working class self-activity into the legal system? This is what has happened in most every industrialized country at one point in their history. Faced with a choice between legalization or repression of worker self-activity, the ruling capitalist class typically chooses repression at first, and when that fails, as it often does, they opt for legalization, hoping to de-radicalize the workers’ movement and avoid an open and bitter class conflict. This has been a remarkably effective strategy of the capitalist class in the US in the 1930s and 1940s, and in Western Europe, and Japan in the post-WWII period. Of course capitalist advocates of repression continue to exist and push for more and more restrictions on the legalization strategy, as in the case of the Taft-Hartley Act, PATCO and Scott Walker in the US, and the current stance of Macron in France and the Tories in the UK. But there is no question that the legalization strategy is a strategy of a section of the capitalist class. Workers rightly support these moves, and we should always fight for the expansion of workers’ legal rights, and against the advocates of repression. And of course we should take advantage of the expansion of rights, as the CIO did in the 1930s and 1940s to build the organization and power of the working class. But we should have no illusions about the intentions and class interests of the politicians that advocate for the legalization strategy, and the limitations that are part and parcel of that strategy because of those intentions and interests.
Eric writes, "the capitalist class actively opposed [the Wagner Act] and did everything possible to defang it after it was signed." Were not Wagner and Roosevelt and other supporters of the Wagner Act also part of and representative of a segment of the capitalist class? This is not unimportant - to understand the purpose of the Act we need to be clear about the class forces behind its design and passage. It seems quite clear from the debate around the Act and from the text of the Act itself - the Preamble states the purpose clearly as "removing certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest" - that Roosevelt and Wagner and the segment of the ruling class that they represented were responding to the 1933 strike wave and the growth of the unemployed movement by establishing a legal channel for the discontent of the working class. Why 1935 and not 1934? Because it takes time to put together a consensus in support of a major change of strategy by the ruling class. Why concessions in 1935 instead of the repression of the Palmer Raids in 1919? Because the growing power of the organized workers' movement - the rise of the CIO and the growing influence of the CPUSA, AWP and SWP in industrial centers - and the split in the ruling class, weakened by the Great Depression, which brought to political office, with the votes of workers and their allies, advocates of concessions to labor at national, state and municipal levels, had changed the balance of forces. So although a big segment of the ruling class fought hard against the Wagner Act's passage and continued to find ways to "defang" it in the years that followed, it is no less clear that working class radicalization and growing militancy on the one hand and the division of the ruling capitalist class on the other were the major factors in the concessions of the Wagner Act, creating the conditions for the doubling of trade union membership in the years 1935-1940.
With regard to Jeffery’s point:
It would be a rather contrarian faction of the capitalist class to push for the legalization of worker self-activity as did Wagner. Note also the level of third party representation emerging in Congress in the mid 30s.
https://milwaukeehistory.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/0813.Farmer-Labor-Progressive-Federation.pdf
So Wagner and Roosevelt represented what class exactly? Why do you think that capitalist class representatives could not support the Wagner Act as a means of channeling working class self-activity into the legal system? This is what has happened in most every industrialized country at one point in their history. Faced with a choice between legalization or repression of worker self-activity, the ruling capitalist class typically chooses repression at first, and when that fails, as it often does, they opt for legalization, hoping to de-radicalize the workers’ movement and avoid an open and bitter class conflict. This has been a remarkably effective strategy of the capitalist class in the US in the 1930s and 1940s, and in Western Europe, and Japan in the post-WWII period. Of course capitalist advocates of repression continue to exist and push for more and more restrictions on the legalization strategy, as in the case of the Taft-Hartley Act, PATCO and Scott Walker in the US, and the current stance of Macron in France and the Tories in the UK. But there is no question that the legalization strategy is a strategy of a section of the capitalist class. Workers rightly support these moves, and we should always fight for the expansion of workers’ legal rights, and against the advocates of repression. And of course we should take advantage of the expansion of rights, as the CIO did in the 1930s and 1940s to build the organization and power of the working class. But we should have no illusions about the intentions and class interests of the politicians that advocate for the legalization strategy, and the limitations that are part and parcel of that strategy because of those intentions and interests.
Eric writes, "the capitalist class actively opposed [the Wagner Act] and did everything possible to defang it after it was signed." Were not Wagner and Roosevelt and other supporters of the Wagner Act also part of and representative of a segment of the capitalist class? This is not unimportant - to understand the purpose of the Act we need to be clear about the class forces behind its design and passage. It seems quite clear from the debate around the Act and from the text of the Act itself - the Preamble states the purpose clearly as "removing certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest" - that Roosevelt and Wagner and the segment of the ruling class that they represented were responding to the 1933 strike wave and the growth of the unemployed movement by establishing a legal channel for the discontent of the working class. Why 1935 and not 1934? Because it takes time to put together a consensus in support of a major change of strategy by the ruling class. Why concessions in 1935 instead of the repression of the Palmer Raids in 1919? Because the growing power of the organized workers' movement - the rise of the CIO and the growing influence of the CPUSA, AWP and SWP in industrial centers - and the split in the ruling class, weakened by the Great Depression, which brought to political office, with the votes of workers and their allies, advocates of concessions to labor at national, state and municipal levels, had changed the balance of forces. So although a big segment of the ruling class fought hard against the Wagner Act's passage and continued to find ways to "defang" it in the years that followed, it is no less clear that working class radicalization and growing militancy on the one hand and the division of the ruling capitalist class on the other were the major factors in the concessions of the Wagner Act, creating the conditions for the doubling of trade union membership in the years 1935-1940.