The Working Class

Abstract

Like any major historical phenomenon, the Mexican Revolution can be viewed from a variety of angles. From one, arguably the most important, it was a rural phenomenon, rightly categorized by Eric Wolf (1969) as a “peasant war”, hence comparable to the Russian or Chinese Revolutions. From another it can be seen as a generalized social and political (some might like to call it a “hegemonic”) crisis, marking the end of the old oligarchic Porfirian order and characterized by mass political mobilization; as such, it bears comparison with the crises experienced in Italy and Germany after the First World War; in Spain in the early 1930s; in Brazil in the 1960s or Chile in the 1970s. But what it emphatically was not was a workers’ revolution. No workers’ party sought — let alone attained — political hegemony. No Soviets or workers’ councils were established, as in Petrograd or Berlin. There were no attempts at workers’ control of industry, as in Turin, Barcelona — or the gran mineria of Bolivia. Though the Mexican working-class had to confront the realities of the revolution, and thus in turn contributed to its development, its contribution was limited and largely reflexive; it responded to events rather than initiating them.