In seinem Anfang 1914 erschienenen Buch über den politischen Massenstreik betont Karl Kautsky, daß die Parteimehrheit, die seit 1899 stets gegen die „staatsmännische Ungeduld” des rechten Flügels vorgehen mußte, sich seit dem Magdeburger Parteitag von 1910 fast ausschließlich gegen die „rebellische Ungeduld” der äußersten Linken zu wenden hatte. Damit liefert er ein bezeichnendes Stichwort der innerparteilichen Diskussion am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges. Die offizielle Ideologic der deutschen Vorkriegssozialdemokratie, die zu Recht mit dem Namen ihres Schöpfers Kautsky etikettiert wird, konnte sich zwar als Element der Integration einer heterogenen Massenpartei im taktischen, organisatorischen und psychologischen Bereich bis 1914 unbestritten behaupten. Insbesondere aber seit der preußischen Wahlrechtsbewegung hatte sie starke Belastungsproben zu bestehen, die von dem linken Parteiflügel ausgingen, der nun mit eigenständiger politischer Kraft und größerem Führungsanspruch auftrat. Der Attentismus des „marxistischen Zentrums”, das unter der theoretischen Führung Kautskys und der politischen Leitung Bebels das Bild der Gesamtpartei prägte, war für die in zahlreichen Nuancierungen sich herauskristallisierende Linke Anlaß zunehmender Unruhe und harter Angriffe. Die Debatten um die Marokkopolitik des Vorstandes dokumentieren dies eindrucksvoll. Die dazu parallel laufenden Bestrebungen eines Teils der Radikalen, die auf eine Reorganisierung der Parteileitung drängten, wurzelten im Boden derselben Kritik

The article begins with a discussion of labour intellectuals as knowledge producers in labour institutions, and of the labour public in which this distinctive kind of intellectual emerges, drawing on our previously published work. Next we construct a typology of three “modes” of the labour intellectual that were proclaimed and remade from the 1890s (the “movement” the “representational”, and the “revolutionary”), and identify the broad historical processes (certification, polarization, and contraction) of the labour public. In a case study comparing the 1890s and 1920s we demonstrate how successive generations of labour intellectuals combined elements of these ideal types in different ways to develop traditions of intellectual work. The article concludes with a sketch of the labour public after the crisis of the 1920s. It considers the rise of the “militant” intellectual in the 1930s, the role of publicists, planners and experts in the 1940s, the skill of “generalship” in the polarized 1940s and 1950s, the failure to meet the challenge of the new social movements in the 1970s, and the decline of the agitational, movement-identified intellectual.

In 1900, Western Australia, a self-governing British colony, adopted compulsory conciliation and arbitration legislation, the first Australian colony to do so. This article focuses primarily on the roles the colonial state and capital played in the adoption of the legislation and proposes a broader, more complex explanation for the introduction of the legislation than current mainstream Western Australian historiography, which, mostly, constructed the event as an unproblematic regional labour triumph. This article argues that the legislation was passed to prevent disruption to gold mining, the industry driving the development of the colony, and to revive the flagging political fortunes of the colonial government. It asserts that the timing of the legislation pre-empted a more effective bill being introduced under conditions less favourable to capital. Organized labour, which, through its lobbying, had created consensus about the desirability of introducing the legislation, was unable to influence the shape of the legislation significantly.

An insistence on the broad similarities and structural linkages of migrations across the globe since the 1840s is important because it can clear the ground for more effective comparisons. Only after questioning the a priori distinction that privileges “modern” transatlantic migrations as categorically distinct from those in the rest of the world can we begin to understand each migrant and migrant flow as emerging from a distinct nexus of global, regional, local, and historical processes. I think I am in agreement with all of the participants in this forum on this basic point. Rather than quibble over numbers and definitions, all of the contributions have attempted to refine our historical comparisons and question some of the interpretive frameworks that are rooted in depictions of the Atlantic migrations as a norm. Once this global foundation is established, we can engage in the detailed empirical and conceptual work that will better address the sticky problems of numbers and categories. Who and what is actually being counted and not counted? When and why should we distinguish between long and short distance, or between international and domestic migration? How should we deal with return and repeat migrations? What is revealed or obscured by taking individuals, families or more extended networks as the basic units of migration? What is the practical or discursive significance of “free” migration?

Britain's tradition of political asylum has for centuries brought refugees of many nationalities to her shores. The influence both direct and indirect, which they have exerted on British life has been a factor of no small importance. The role of religious immigration has frequently been examined, that of the socialist emigrés from Central Europe has so far received less detailed attention.

Marx a lu pendant près de sept ans les ouvrages des économistes et en a fait des extraits, souvent annotés, qui emplissent une quarantaine de cahiers. En 1851, il se croit, avec quelque apparence de raison, au bout de ses recherches, et s'apprête à rédiger l'oeuvre méditée. L'accueil des éditeurs allemands ne l'y encourage guère. Malade, sans ressources, il se voit offrir la correspondance européenne d'un grand quotidien new-yorkais et accepte avec empressement. Le problème est d'écrire en anglais. Il aura recours à Engels et signera les articles que son anti lui enverra pendant plusieurs mois de Manchester.

This essay examines the relationship between popular initiatives and government decision-makers during the 1930s. The economic crisis and the reawakening of labor militancy before 1935 elevated men and women, who had been formed by the workers' movement of the 1910s and 1920s, to prominent roles in the making of national industrial policies. Quite different was the reshaping of social insurance and work relief measures. Although those policies represented a governmental response to the distress and protests of the working class, the workers themselves had little influence on their formulation or administration. Through industrial struggles, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) mobilized a new cadre, trained by youthful encounters with urban ethnic life, expanding secondary schooling and subordination to modern corporate management, in an unsuccessful quest for economic planning and universal social insurance through the agency of a reformed Democratic Party.

The cahiers de doléances of 1789 have generally been regarded as unique historical documents. In convening the Estates General, the royal government followed centuries-old precedent in asking the nation not only to elect representatives to an assembly, but to provide them with lists of the demands, wishes, and grievances of their constituents as well. One could hardly describe these documents as resources unknown to historians. Apart from a very few who have seen these documents essentially as fraudulent, historians have generally seen them as uniquely vox populi. Tocqueville, for example, described them as “an authentic account” of the ideas and feelings of the nation drawn up “in perfect freedom”. More recently, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret saw them as “the truest sampling of opinion ever realized in the France of the Old Regime”.

The growth of white-collar unionism and its impact on British trade unions in the postwar period has received little attention from social historians. Radical critics have noted the failure of Clive Jenkins to provide a clear lead in defending workers' conditions, while mainstream, institutionalist commentators more often stress the diversity of specific interests served by such unions. Recent research has called into question earlier models of union governance, though there remain few studies of the history of officer relations within trade unions. This article examines the leadership of ASTMS in the decade after its formation. It is argued that the strategies pursued by Jenkins, including the recruitment, training, and deployment of fieldworkers, were guided by accumulated knowledge and culture (as well as brilliant opportunism) rather than by the structure of the union or the composition of the membership. In offering educated officers a career structure, ASTMS increased its capacity for expertise and effective communication without descending into the political sectarianism of the postwar years. The charismatic, capricious style adopted by Jenkins, as well as the difficulties of absorbing a diverse membership in this period of rapid growth, contributed to the tensions which culminated in a series of struggles between the union and its bargainers during the 1970s.

This article is a contribution to and reassessment of the debate about the concept of ‘white labourism’ hosted in this journal in 2010. White labourism is a concept formulated by Jonathan Hyslop to describe an ideology combining an anti-capitalist critique with racial segregation that he argued was dominant in a transnational white working class in the British Empire in the early twentieth century. The debate about this concept has focused on the appeal and extent of this ideology in South Africa during the early twentieth century. In light of recent scholarship on Southern Africa, we take a longer-term perspective to critically examine the concept and the debate. Specifically, we make three interventions into this debate: we consider the role of white workers outside British imperial networks; we examine how radical and revolutionary ideas disappeared from white-working class politics in the mid-twentieth century; and we reassess the connection between transnational flows of people and ideas. Racial divisions in the working class and labour movement in Southern Africa were persistent and enduring. We argue that racial segregation had an enduring appeal to white workers in Southern Africa, and the sources of this appeal were more varied and locally rooted than simply transnational migration to the region.

The plan of Dynamics of Contention embraces several goals. The first is to revitalize social-movement theory, to make it more dynamic, to transcend sharp distinctions between (for example) actors and trajectories. The second is to tear down the barriers between subdisciplines in social science such as social-movement theory and the study of nationalisms. These are conventional demarcations which the authors see as arbitrary and counterproductive to new insights that may be gained within a broader field of contentious politics. Finally the centrepiece: the authors aim to develop an explanatory strategy that avoids two pitfalls – particularistic history and sweeping generalizations in the tradition of Carl Hempel's covering law model. They propose the following solution. First, identify a number (not too large) of causal mechanisms that are at work in different times and places. Secondly, examine whether these mechanisms link regularly, whether they concatenate into what the authors call “robust processes”, i.e. processes that may be identified in a number of different historical “episodes”. An “episode” is something unique and circumscribed, not something ephemeral. On the other hand, an episode of nation-building may last for years. The authors' ambition seems to be to offer lean and muscular, but not parsimonious, explanations. To use their own words, their programme aims to “uncover recurring sets of mechanisms that combine into robust processes which, in turn, recur over a surprising number and broad range of episodes” (p. 314).

This article examines the main characteristics of the reform of the Soviet social security system in the 1920s and the early years of Stalinism. It uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine the development of the system from many angles: the beneficiaries, the political debates, and the methods used to finance it. The reforms introduced during this period show that the Soviet welfare system depended almost entirely on economic progress; in 1927, the only state-funded provision was for disabled war veterans. Hence, the welfare system was quite specific: it was used as a tool to promote the industrialization of the country, favouring the workers at the expense of the disabled and unemployed, who were forced to fall back on various self-help strategies, some legal, some illegal. The disabled and unemployed constituted the main social problem of the 1920s. Social legislation between 1931 and 1932, under the shadow of the impact which the Great Depression was having on Soviet society, progressively excluded the disabled and unemployed from the welfare system. Thus the USSR attempted to solve the unemployment problem by means of social exclusion.

Drawing from case file records generated in rural labour courts in Brazil’s north-eastern state of Pernambuco between 1965 and 1982, this paper demonstrates how these forums reified class-based exploitation, even as they purportedly protected workers’ rights. The paper focuses on two districts in the state’s sugarcane-growing region, both of which reveal a clear pattern of inferior treatment for rural as opposed to non-rural workers. Interpreting the evidence as a function of long-term patterns of social and economic relations in the region, the paper also sets this case in a larger context of rural labour history around the world.

Im Januar 1895 war der Geschäitsführer des Verlags „Buchhandlung Vorwärts”, Richard Fischer, „beim Durchblättern alter Zeitungen” auf Marxens Artikel „Die Juniniederlage 1848”, „Der 13. Juni 1849” und „Folgen des 13. Juni 1849” gestoβen, welche 1850 in den ersten drei Heften der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue erschienen waren. Am 30. des Monats bat er Engels in einem Brief um dessen Zustimmung zur Herausgabe der völlig unbekannten Marxschen Arbeit in Form einer Broschüre. Gleichzeitig ersuchte er ihn, eine Einleitung dazu zu verfassen. Da Fischer die Schrift spätestens im März herausbringen wollte – er hielt Engels vor Augen, daβ nach einer möglichen Annahme der Umsturzvorlage das Erscheinen der Marxschen Arbeit in Frage gestellt sei –, drängte er auf eine umgehende definitive Antwort. Engels monierte zwar am 2. Februar die Art und Weise, in der er zeitlich unter Druck gesetzt würde, stimmte aber dem Plan Fischers zu und versprach, die gewünschte Einleitung in Angriff zu nehmen. Darüber hinaus erweiterte er die Marxschen Artikel um jene Abschnitte aus der „Revue” des fünften und sechsten Heftes der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung, die die Ereignisse in Frankreich behandelten. Aus drei Vorschlägen, die Engels machte, wählte Fischer den Titel „Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich 1848 bis 1850”.

The “Bread Riots” that broke out in Tunisia on 28 December 1983 lasted barely ten days. Yet, they cost the lives of over one hundred people. The revolt studied here centred on two popular neighbourhoods of Tunis in the wake of massive, World Bank-sponsored development plans. This article seeks to understand how the inhabitants in these quarters reacted to the establishment of a new welfare state that was more concerned with fighting poverty – or fighting the poor – than with equalizing conditions or offering the same opportunities for everyone. Based on this case study, I argue that the great Bread Revolt of 1983–1984 marked a break with past practices of state reform and popular protest and suggest that International Monetary Fund and World Bank prescriptions and state implementations reconfigured the political and social landscape of independent Tunisia.

Divided between revolutionary syndicalism and reformist unions, Rio de Janeiro’s labour movement represented one of the most complex local cases during the Brazilian First Republic. This article intends to show how relations between these two currents were far from clear cut, and that, despite the confrontational discourse they adopted and the disputes over labour unions they were involved in, they eventually shared common practices and, to some degree, a common culture.

This article examines the ways in which unionization impacted upon race relations in Chicago's meatpacking industry. It focuses upon a period when a dynamic working-class movement sought to overcome barriers imposed by a hierarchical job structure and reinforced by ethnic and racial divisions. The movement drew its strength from several sources. The support of the Chicago Federation of Labor threw the resources of a powerful local movement behind the campaign and encouraged the emergence of new, inclusive, forms of organization. The existence of shop-floor organizations further augmented the movement's power. Finally, the intervention of the government, in the form of binding arbitration, led to dramatic improvements in wages and conditions which helped the movement consolidate its position. Although these gains were undone and the movement destroyed, the union campaign transformed racial and class experiences in the stockyards.

Critics of E. P. Thompson have questioned his emphasis on the ties between radicalism and trade unionism in early nineteenth-century England; historians have likewise described the 1818 strikes as simple wage disputes in which the radicals played a negligible role. This essay challenges these assumptions about the 1818 strikes and radicalism. In the summer of 1818, when a wide range of grievances touched off the strike wave, the radicals rallied to the side of the trades and sometimes served as leaders of the strikes; that summer the radicals and striking trades also drew upon and contributed to a shared repertoire of old and new tactics and forms of action.

The modern history of British deep-sea fishing begins with the railway expansion of the mid-nineteenth century. Rapid transport and the increasing use of ice as a preservative made it possible for fresh sea fish to enter the diets of the inhabitants of inland towns. Fresh sea fish was regarded as almost a luxury food before the railway age, yet by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it had become a major protein source for the working classes of the industrial towns, and the fried-fish shop had become a working-class institution. The sea-fishing industry underwent a vast market-induced expansion. The census of 1841 enumerated only 24,000 males as being employed in fishing. By 1881 there were 58,000. If the inland consumer ever gave thought to the fishermen who supplied his table, he probably conjured up a picture of a weather-beaten village fisherman going daily to the fishing grounds to return in the evening to his waiting wife and children, bringing the silver harvest of the sea. While he had been at sea his family had busied themselves baiting lines, making and mending nets, and, in the case of the fish wives, performing their traditional function of selling the catch. Such a picture may have been broadly true of the fishing villages of Scotland, Cornwall, Northumberland or the South coast, but a feature of the second half of the nineteenth century was the creation of a new kind of fisherman who crewed the sailing trawlers of the North Sea. The expansion of the market has coincided with the discovery of the rich beds of the North Sea, and to such an extent did the North Sea trawling ports come to dominate the fishing industry that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Hull and Grimsby were together receiving as much fish as all the remaining ports of England and Wales put together. Those who toiled on the grey North Sea were known as the “smacksmen”, and it is the extreme nature of their occupation which is the subject of this study.