James Boggs, the “Outsiders,” and the Challenge of Postindustrial Society

Abstract

The immediate subject of James Boggs's The American Revolution is the far-reaching transformation of American industry through automation and cybernetic command. He offers a political reading of these new forces of production that greatly diminished the power of industrial workers on the shop floor and in U.S. politics more generally during the post–World War II period. In light of the new social and economic terrain of postindustrial society, Boggs urges a rethinking of leftist revolution. In this essay, I excavate certain aspects of Boggs's formative critique of automation and its implications for working-class life and politics and consider how well his analysis of the social contradictions produced under postindustrialism anticipates the emergence of the New Right. In contrast to Cold War liberals and latter-day purveyors of underclass rhetoric who emphasize alleged cultural dysfunction to explain inequality, Boggs saw the new urban poor, those who face chronic unemployment under automation, as potential agents of social change and developed a novel concept of cultural revolution whereby the “classless society” could be achieved through a revolution in values rather than the pursuit of statist transition. Cooperatively organized production might eliminate material need, deliver more leisure time, and enable a freer, more socially just order than that available under liberal capitalism. For Boggs, this was the profound, cultural challenge facing Americans under postindustrialism.