Description
Book SynopsisWhy has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers'' reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth.Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging: occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change, Dismantling Solidarity mounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of America's private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welf
Trade Review
Offers not only an excellent and comprehensive overview but also a critical discussion of how the retirement security system has developed in the United States since World War II. With [McCarthy's] in-depth understanding of the U.S. welfare state, labor relations in general, and old-age security in particular, the author has written a coherent and informative book.... A great book that gives a masterful overview of howold-age security has developed in the United States, and it explains these developments with convincing arguments.Without any hesitation, I would recommend Dismantling Solidarity to a broad readership, including researchers and students in sociology, history, political science, and economics as well as stakeholders and policymakers.
* American Journal of Sociology *
McCarthy navigates his theoretical terrain deftly and efficiently, taking the heavily dog-eared body of structuralist-Marxist state theory (Block, O’Connor, Offe, and Poulantzas) and makes it feel fresh.... Dismantling Solidarity joins a welcome influx of new scholarship that, in its framing and focus, calls attention to the fact that ours is a political moment that hungers for smart class analysis.
* International Journal of Comparative Sociology *
As McCarthy rightly points out, the connection between developments of the welfare state and state management of economic crises has been drawn before. McCarthy's contribution, apart from skillfully tracing the history of the private pension system... is his explanation for and analysis of the contingency of retirement income. Dismantling Solidarity is an excellent account of the history of private pensions, but it is also a window into the future.
* Political Science Quarterly *
Table of Contents1. The Retirement Puzzle 2. Capitalist Crisis and Pension Insecurity 3. Reconversion and the Origin of Bargained Plans 4. Turning Labor into Finance Capital 5. Toward the 401(k) Ownership Society 6. Conclusions
