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16 - Municipal Socialism

from Worldwide Connections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Shelton Stromquist
Edited by
Marcel van der Linden
Marcel van der Linden
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
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Summary

Municipal socialism has been an unstable concept historically.1 While directly associated with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the lives of workers in cities, its proponents drew on traditions of utopian communalism that antedated, or at least coincided with, the onset of industrialism. While it is most commonly thought of as a species of social democratic politics, municipal socialism also came to be identified with the direct seizure of power in cities, as in the Paris Commune, or more ephemerally in the political context of urban general strikes – Seattle or Winnipeg in 1919, for instance – or with the defence of Republican cities like Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War.2 The classic incarnation of municipal socialism appeared with the onset of ‘Red Vienna’ and the election of a social democratic city council and mayor in May 1919.3 Revolutionary practice of what might be thought of as ‘municipal socialism’ often consorted with anarchists’ visions of working-class self-governance.

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Socialism , pp. 366 - 388
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Bose, Ashish, ‘Municipal socialism’, Economic and Political Weekly 6, 12 (1971), pp. 641–82.Google Scholar
Chavez, Daniel, and Goldfrank, Benjamin (eds.), The Left in the City: Participatory Local Governments in Latin America (London: Latin American Bureau, 2004).Google Scholar
Dogliani, Patrizia, ‘European municipalism in the first half of the twentieth century: the Socialist Network’, Contemporary European History 2, 4 (2002), pp. 573–96.Google Scholar
Judd, Richard W., Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American Socialism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Laybourne, Keith, ‘“The Defence of the Bottom Dog”: The Independent Labour Party in Local Politics’, in Wright, D. G. and Jowitt, J. A. (eds.), Victorian Bradford: Essays in Honour of Jack Reynolds (Bradford, UK: City of Bradford Metropolitan Council, 1982), pp. 223–44.Google Scholar
Leopold, Ellen, and MacDonald, David A., ‘Municipal socialism then and now: some lessons for the Global South’, Third World Quarterly 33, 10 (2012), pp. 1837–53.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Stuart, Little Moscows: Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Interwar Britain (London: Croom Helm, 1980).Google Scholar
Markey, Ray, ‘The emergence of the Labor Party at the municipal level in NSW, 1891–1900’, Australian Journal of History and Politics 31, 3 (1985), pp. 408–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Sally M., ‘For white men only: the Socialist Party of America and issues of gender, ethnicity and race’, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2, 3 (2003), pp. 283–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Saldern, Adelheid, ‘Sozialdemokratische Kommunalpolitik in Wilhelminischer Zeit’, in Karl-Heinz Nassmacher (ed.), Kommunalpolitik und Sozialdemokratie. Der Beitrag des demokratischen Sozialismus zur kommunalen Selbstverwaltung (Bonn–Bad Godesberg: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1977), pp. 18–62.Google Scholar
Seliger, Maren, Sozialdemokratie und Kommunalpolitik in Wien. Zu einigen Aspekten sozialdemokratischer Politik in der Vor- und Zwischenkriegszeit (Vienna: Jugend & Volk Verlag, 1980).Google Scholar

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