ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the strategic initiatives of capital and labour in the older regions of the United States. The emerging international division of labour and the global scope of capital flows, imply that capital has adopted the use of spatial and sectoral mobility as a major instrument in its struggle with labour. Under global capitalism, historic tendencies such as automation and deskilling are no less evident, but the potential number of production locations expands dramatically. The strategic agenda of capitalist class political activists in response to the new situation is quite comprehensive. The Massachusetts legal and social terrain – unemployment compensation, for example, and welfare payments – show the local working class to have been relatively successful as compared to others. Class responses to what is experienced as local or regional decline, in both its production and consumption aspects, have often involved demands directed at state policy and institutions.
