This paper argues that important dynamics of class relations can be revealed by the analysis of strike patterns. A theoretically informed analysis of disaggregated American strike data by issue, industrial sector, contract status and duration between 1947 and 1981 suggests that American labour militancy has displayed a somewhat contradictory pattern of 'aggressive economism and defensive control'. The role of the postwar accord between capital and labour, and the segmentation of the industrial structure into monopoly and competitive sectors, are seen as key structural determinants of this pattern. The emergence of the 'worker insurgency' of the late 1960s and the 1970s is seen as a rank-and-file response to the increasingly narrow economic focus of the capital-labour accord and an attack upon management, union leadership and, implicitly, the state.
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