Split Labor Market and the State: The Effect of Modernization on Jewish Industrial Workers in Tsarist Russia

The displacement of higher-priced Jewish industrial workers in the Pale of Jewish Settlement in Tsarist Russia by lower-priced Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, and other workers durign early industrialization is examined in light of Edna Bonacich's split labor-market theory. Studies of split labor market have so far analyzed the opposite phenomenon: the exclusion of lower-priced workers (of a distinct ethnic background) or their transformation into a subordinate caste. This examination concurs with Bonacich's argument that a major form of ethnic conflict is generated in the labor market but demonstrates the necessity of specifying the historical period of capitalist development in which the victory of higher-priced workers, through the formation of a split labor market, is made possible. Such success is dependent on their degree of influence on the state, which, in turn, depends on their location in the productive process and on their level of economic and political organization.