The Unemployed Workers Movement of the 1930s: A Reexamination of the Piven and Cloward Thesis

Abstract

This paper examines the rise and decline of the unemployed workers movement in the United States in the 1930s. The analysis highlights the articulation of the movement's organizational form and the larger political environment to explain these changes. The movement's inability to change its organizational form in the face of early New Deal reforms led to the precipitous decline in protest activity in 1934. Contrary to the Piven and Cloward thesis, this inability derived from neither oligarchic tendencies within the leadership nor political coaptation by the New Deal, but from the competition between organizations within the movement. Although protest declined, lobbying continued and shifted the parameters of the welfare debate in 1934 and 1935. I consider the implications of this analysis for theories of collective action and argue that movement structure and political environment are key resources in a movement's development.