What had previously registered as strictly economic demands, such as hours and wage increases, were now considered as part of more systematic demands that directly involved the state (which had become the de facto employer). Th e direct intervention of the state in production meant that industrial struggles against the employers immediately developed into political struggles against the state— and thus to demands that state power be used to bring social production under democratic control (Clarke 1988, 199).

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 374