Radical Labor Research Articles

Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937 by Elizabeth Grennan Browning (review)

Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937 by Elizabeth Grennan Browning (review)

Nature's Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937 by Elizabeth Grennan Browning (review)

Nature's Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937 by Elizabeth Grennan Browning (review)

The return of public ownership amidst neoliberal mutation

The pursuit of a distinctive agenda around democratic public ownership under the Corbyn leadership was symbolic of the departure from the largely neoliberal economic governance perspective that dominated Labour Party policy in and out of government during the New Labour years. In contrast to some of the more dismissive critiques of the Corbyn‐McDonnell moment, which either want to caricature it as stuck in a ‘hard left’ groove from the 1980s, or as identifiable as a more traditional social-democratic project of the post 1945 era, it argues that the proposed programme of democratic public ownership (DPO) was genuinely transformative in its framing around economic democracy as an alternative to neoliberal governance. It was different from past radical Labour programmes in its commitment to decentred and pluralist institutions and ownership forms, yet still concerned with achieving radical change through the state.

Nature's Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937

Nature's Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937

:Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937

:<i>Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937</i>

Robert W. Cherny, Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend by Chris Madsen

Robert W. Cherny, Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend by Chris Madsen

Book Review: Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend by Cherny, Robert W

Book Review: <i>Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend</i> by Cherny, Robert W

Raymond Williams’s Resources for Hope

ABSTRACT: All sorts of people had come to the Welsh countryside to spend the day talking about the history of labor radicalism: miners, organizers, researchers, politicians. But the star attraction was missing. Raymond Williams, the Cambridge scholar and socialist beacon, had agreed by letter to speak; rumor was that he would be arriving in a big car. Then, as a runner returned from the parking area to report the distressing news that no big car had arrived, a tall, craggy-featured man rose from the audience and made his way to the stage. He had been there all day, listening, watching, content among his people, not making a point of himself. There was no need to make a point; everyone in that world knew his name. It was not a merely local fame. Zadie Smith recalls that when she was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the 1990s, Williams sat beside Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes in the pantheon of social and literary theorists. He was Stuart Hall’s friend and collaborator, E.P. Thompson’s ally and sparring partner, Terry Eagleton’s teacher, and often worked side by side with Perry Anderson. When he died in 1988, Robin Blackburn wrote in the New Left Review that Williams was the “most authoritative, consistent, and radical voice” of the British left.

Raymond Williams's Resources for Hope

ABSTRACT: All sorts of people had come to the Welsh countryside to spend the day talking about the history of labor radicalism: miners, organizers, researchers, politicians. But the star attraction was missing. Raymond Williams, the Cambridge scholar and socialist beacon, had agreed by letter to speak; rumor was that he would be arriving in a big car. Then, as a runner returned from the parking area to report the distressing news that no big car had arrived, a tall, craggy-featured man rose from the audience and made his way to the stage. He had been there all day, listening, watching, content among his people, not making a point of himself. There was no need to make a point; everyone in that world knew his name. It was not a merely local fame. Zadie Smith recalls that when she was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the 1990s, Williams sat beside Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes in the pantheon of social and literary theorists. He was Stuart Hall's friend and collaborator, E.P. Thompson's ally and sparring partner, Terry Eagleton's teacher, and often worked side by side with Perry Anderson. When he died in 1988, Robin Blackburn wrote in the New Left Review that Williams was the "most authoritative, consistent, and radical voice" of the British left.

Learning to Struggle, Learning to Govern: How Black Youth Marshaled Education to Navigate Urban Transformations in the Motor City, 1967-1972

This article examines the role of nontraditional education in Black youth’s efforts to navigate postwar transformations in Detroit, Michigan. While historians have debated the role of social movements in contestations over urban space, there is still a great deal to learn about the place of education and the young people who would inherit the city in these movements. Marshaling the analytical frameworks of social history and intellectual history, this article demonstrates that the use of education as a tool for political struggle was a practice that crossed institutional boundaries, from community-led political education to university partnerships to school-sponsored seminars. The nature of cities, with their expansive bureaucracies and vibrant political life, required and made possible educational projects that traversed institutional contexts. Within the city landscape, high school and out-of-school youth, academics, and labor radicals collectively reimagined the function of education in transforming urban spaces.

Review: Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937, by Elizabeth Grennan Browning

Review: <i>Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937</i>, by Elizabeth Grennan Browning

The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland

The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland

Employer associations in light of the Great Recession and radical labour market deregulation in Southern Europe: An analysis from the perspective of company membership

AbstractThis article analyses the impact of the Great Recession and radical labour market deregulation on employer associations’ (EAs) membership levels and composition in Southern Europe. It also reviews the literature and advances it in four relevant aspects. First, it verifies a general decrease in membership of EAs in Southern Europe, almost to the point of collapse in Greece. Secondly, it identifies the greater importance of large companies (more than Fordist economic sectors) in the composition of this membership. Thirdly, it confirms that sectoral bargaining (as a major determinant) and union representation (an element weakened by reforms) are strong company-level incentives for membership in EAs. Finally, it re-examines the reasons put forward in the scholarly literature to explain why EAs in Southern Europe have not been in favour of these significant institutional changes.

Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937, By Elizabeth Grennan Browning

Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886–1937, By Elizabeth Grennan Browning

Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend, By Robert W. Cherny

Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend, By Robert W. Cherny

Review: Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University, by Richard White

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University, by Richard White Richard White. Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University. New York: W.W. Norton, 2022. 362 pp. Hardcover $35.00. Robert W. Cherny Robert W. Cherny ROBERT W. CHERNY, professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University, has written on Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics and on California and western history, most recently in Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend (2023). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 105–107. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.105 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert W. Cherny; Review: Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University, by Richard White. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 105–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.105 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search As the long subtitle indicates, this book is about several things, but they all focus, in one way or another, on the death of Jane Lathrop Stanford on February 28, 1905, in the Moana Hotel in Honolulu. The attending physicians, the coroner’s jury, and public officials in Hawaii all concluded that Stanford, the widow of railroad baron and former California governor Leland Stanford and the cofounder of Stanford University, had been poisoned by strychnine. There had been a previous attempt at poisoning on January 14, 1905, when she was in the Stanford mansion in San Francisco. But despite the abundant physical and circumstantial evidence, Stanford University officials, led by President David Starr Jordan, insisted that hers was a natural death. As White acknowledges early on, Robert Cutler, in The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford (2003), confirmed that Stanford indeed died by strychnine poisoning. White explains that his initial interest in... You do not currently have access to this content.

Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse: Ethnic and Class Dynamics during the Era of American Industrialization

Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse: Ethnic and Class Dynamics during the Era of American Industrialization

Reimagining Democracy: The Socialist Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in the United States

AbstractThe initiative and referendum are commonly characterized as quintessentially Populist or Progressive reforms, but transatlantic socialism deserves pride of place in the intellectual history of direct legislation in the United States. A decade and a half before the People’s Party famously commended the idea of direct legislation at its 1892 nominating convention in Omaha, Nebraska, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) made the demand for direct legislation a plank in its first party platform. That demand was shaped by the 1875 Gotha Program formulated by the Socialist Workers Party of Germany and informed by socialist debates during the First International and the pioneering work of Moritz Rittinghausen. The diffusion of these ideas among Gilded Age labor radicals is a crucial and underappreciated part of the story of the origins of the initiative and referendum in the United States. That socialists’ pioneering role in the origins of the initiative and referendum in the United States has largely been slighted is particularly ironic since the individual arguably most responsible for securing the direct legislation resolution at Omaha was among the nation’s most successful radical labor organizers and a committed socialist, Joseph R. Buchanan.

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Review: Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, by Rachel Schreiber

Review: <i>Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration</i>, by Rachel Schreiber