Working-Class Collective Action Research Articles

Women's Suffrage, Political Economy, and the Transatlantic Birth Strike Movement, 1911–1920

AbstractThe first two decades of the twentieth century saw the development of a meaningful transnational movement to employ birth strikes in the fight for women's rights. In an Anglo-American context, this movement was intimately tied to the women's suffrage campaign. It was led by a network of suffragists, Neo-Malthusians, and birth control campaigners who shared literary and personal ties which allowed their ideas to criss-cross the Atlantic between 1911 and 1920. Although the transatlantic birth strike was never implemented on a significant scale, explaining its almost total absence within existing historiography, this article uses a gendered intellectual history framework to piece together the ideas behind the movement which, the article argues, disrupt established understanding of Neo-Malthusianism and socialist-feminism within intellectual histories. Support for birth striking was predicated on faith in the power of working-class collective action, scrutiny of the economic exploitation of both productive and ‘reproductive’ workers, and a corresponding mistrust in the efficacy of state involvement with these issues. The birth strikers wove together strands from collectivist, individualist, socialist, and feminist thought, undermining traditional historiographical depictions of binaries between socialism and suffragism and collectivism and individualism in early twentieth-century political thought.

A case of ‘strategic ethnicity’? The Natal Indian Congress in the 1970s

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the revival of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in 1971 in the context of what is retrospectively known as the ‘Durban moment’. The early 1970s witnessed the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) as well as a resurgence of working class collective action that was to form the embryo of the independent labour movement later in the decade. This article examines the debates surrounding the revival of the NIC, in particular whether this reinforced an exclusive ethnic identity while dampening broader non-racial responses, and whether and how the NIC's revival impacted on debates about participation in government-created structures such as the South African Indian Council (SAIC).

Marginalizing Josefina: Work, Gender, and Protest in Bohemia 1820-1844

The study concentrates on the pre-1848 labor protests in Bohemia and analyzes them with respect to questions of gender. It reviews the current historiography on the topic, focusing mainly on the English example. Here some of the recent key debates within the field of labor history have been held, arguing that working-class action in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was shaped by a gender composite working-class culture that was inherently both masculine and feminine. Taking these debates as a yardstick, the paper explores how the codes and institutions of skilled labor masculinity shaped working-class collective action in pre-1848 Bohemia. Bohemia was, the study argues, one of the most industrialized regions next to England and France during the first half of the nineteenth century and also produced a significant amount of collective labor protests. The paper analyzes these protests in terms of their gender structure and compares this structure with the gender composition of the respective labor force. It comes to the conclusion that while the qualified labor force of the Bohemian textile industry, which generated the overall majority of all unrests, was gender-mixed, its protests were predominantly carried out by a crowd consisting only of men. The explanation for this discrepancy is found in the Bohemian working-class culture, which was shaped by male-friendly societies and brotherhoods. These brotherhoods constituted the institutional arena for the emergence of working-class masculinity, which went on to dominate the entire working-class culture and hence shaped the majority of collective protests as well.

Faith and Morals in the Modern United States, 1865-Present

Faith and Morals in the United States, 1865-Present John T. McGreevy (bio) Easter parades. Voodou. Women joining a Lubavitcher sect. Mormon underwear. Passover dishes. Prayers to St. Jude. Snake handlers. 1 The temptation when scanning the topics listed above is to dismiss them as an odd, even bizarre, grouping—a collection of exotica that surely rests on more substantive work on religion and the modern United States. This temptation should be resisted. Investigations of these topics are part of arguably the most creative body of work in the field, certainly for the twentieth century. Its hallmarks include the use of personal observation and interviews to supplement archival sources, resistance to separation of the sacred and the profane, and a tendency to sidestep defining what religion is in favor of investigating how religion works. Its practitioners typically work outside of history departments, usually in religious studies programs or divinity schools. 2 The contrast between the energy displayed by this relatively new literature and the pleas for recognition issued by more traditional historians of American religion is intriguing. 3 Pity for scholars interested in religion is in one sense misplaced, since few, if any, fields have received as much support over the past fifteen years. During that time two major foundations, the Lilly Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, have sponsored a variety of projects (some ongoing) on topics as diverse as women and American Protestantism, Latino Catholicism, lived religion, mainline Protestantism, congregations, the material culture of American religion, and religion and higher education. The Louisville Institute for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture, the Princeton Center for the Study of American Religion and the Pew program in American religious history (centered at Yale) have contributed a series of dissertation fellowships and research grants, and next year Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism begins a major research project on twentieth century Catholicism. Much of this new work has yet to emerge from the academic pipeline but it is already obvious, as the editors of one forthcoming collection of essays point out, that both the volume and the quality are unprecedented. Indeed the [End Page 239] volume is such that an essay of this length inevitably refers to a tiny proportion of worthy projects. 4 But is anybody listening? What remains surprising is the minimal effect these projects have had on textbook accounts of modern America, or even on surveys of the literature. The problem would seem not to be anti-religious bias, since a massive literature now analyzes the ways in which religious beliefs intersected with the American revolution, and religious ideas are now understood as central to antebellum reform and the collapse of the second party system in the 1850s. 5 Nonetheless, after 1865 paths diverge. Complaints about exclusion inevitably strike a petulant tone, but it is noteworthy that historians of the most religious nation in the industrial world understand their country’s immediate past with little reference to religion. Discussion of religion and politics in the twentieth century remains largely the province of sociologists and political scientists, a phenomenon especially marked in the still impoverished literature on American conservatism. 6 Labor historians sometimes move from the plant to the neighborhood saloon in their search for class consciousness, without glancing at one of the most impressive products of working-class collective action—churches and parochial schools. (It is only fair to add that religious historians are often blind to the class dimensions of religious experience.) Historians of popular culture prefer close readings of Leave it to Beaver to analyses of televangelism. Paul Tillich’s writings had an important influence on Martin Luther King, Jr., 1960s student activists, Erik Erickson, and Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, but this does not mean that most Americanists interested in the twentieth century could identify the émigré theologian. 7 The National Standards for History for elementary and high school teachers (which generally seem to me fair and useful) reflect the implicit judgment of historians on this point: after 1865 religion enters the national story only with William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial and Jerry Falwell at Republican rallies. Occasionally, religion is added...

Working for Democracy: Brazil's Organized Working Class in Comparative Perspective

Working-class collective action may appear to be in decline. In many ad vanced capitalist countries, industrial working class has shrunk, rates of unionization have dropped, unions have lost power, and parties represent ing labor have slipped in popularity. At same time, new scholarship has questioned universality of class-based collective action, insisting that it is contingent, socially constructed, and historically specific. The relevance of class to contemporary politics, even its very existence, is questioned more and more forcefully. It may be that those who study labor movements will soon study not working-class collective action but in words of a college administrator, the movement of labor from one place to anoth er.1 Yet class identity and working-class collective action as a form of politics are not in decline everywhere. Taking one powerful indicator of such action?the formation of trade unions?we find that percentage of workers in trade unions actually increased even in advanced capitalist countries such as Sweden, Italy, and Canada between 1970 and 1990.2 And in many so-called newly industrializing countries, trade union growth has been explosive in last few decades.3 Brazil is one of those countries. Its trade unionists have become not only numerous, but militant: Since late 1970s unions have played a key role in opposing military regime that was reformed into a civilian one in 1985, in dismantling state controls over labor, and in challenging neoliberal economic reforms. The weight of organized working class has increased mightily in Brazil over last quarter-century, in terms of both its sheer numerical strength and its role as a political actor. Organized labor has also been a key element in growth of support for left-wing parties since Brazil returned to a system of multiparty compe tition in 1982. These parties include Democratic Labor party, or Par tido Democr?tico Trabalhista (PDT); Socialist party, or Partido Social ista Brasileiro (PSB); Communist party, or Partido Comunista do Brasil (PC do B); and most significantly, Workers' party, or Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). All of these parties have appealed strongly to organized working class in their rhetoric and programs and all, save PDT, increased their representation in national congress in 1994 elections. Together, they control one-fifth of seats in lower house, C?mara dos Deputados. In historiography of Latin American labor, Brazil has often been

Tenant Mobilization and the 1907 Rent Strike in Buenos Aires

In September of 1907, the residents of a largeconventillo, or tenement house, in Buenos Aires protested a 47 percent rent increase by striking against their landlord and refusing to pay. The strikers called on the residents of other rental buildings to join with them and organized a central committee. The strike spread quickly. By October 1 tenants from more than 750 buildings had joined in the strike. That number increased to nearly 2,000 buildings before the end of 1907. Neighborhood and building committees arose throughout the city as nearly one tenth of the total population of Buenos Aires, and tenants in several other major cities as well, joined the strike in one of the largest and most unusual forms of working-class collective action in early twentieth-century Argentina.

The re-making of the English working class?

More than twenty-five years after its publication The Making of the English Working Class remains a landmark work in English history and the study of class formation. Thompson's formulation and application of agency and experience in understanding the process of class formation have altered the ways historians and social scientists approach the study of class. From its inception The Making has been a lightening rod for criticism, some of it piquant and politically charged. In the latest round of critique, Gareth Stedman Jones and Joan Wallach Scott have argued that Thompson seriously neglects the role of discourse in class formation, and in doing so has presented a partial and distorted picture. They each have offered analyses that find a central role for discourse in the process of class formation. Stedman Jones sees political radicalism as a guiding force of working-class collective action, while Scott finds a fundamental gendering of the ways in which the working class was organized through discourse. Both Stedman Jones and Scott are clearly correct in observing that discourse played an important role in this working-class history, yet their accounts are reductionist and highly skewed interpretations of a rich and complex history. By privileging discourse as a casual force in class formation they shunt experience and agency into minor roles, providing impoverished accounts of how the working class was indeed active in its own making. The alternative I have proposed is to focus on discourse as an intermediate process linking experience and agency, animated through social organization and collective action. The English working class of the early nineteenth century faced degradation of their labor and political oppression of rights they perceived as fundamental. In response to these trials they constructed expressions of their grievances and visions of solutions through the discourse streams available to them. Through the contextual use of various streams they articulated a consciousness of class. This process itself was part of the class struggle that was their making. In this sense, discourse framed the painting of the panorama, and perhaps added shading, hue, and perspective, but it did not create the picture. As Thompson, following Marx, has observed, it is people that do the making, even if it is not just as they please.

Rationality and Revolution: A Response to Holmstrom on the Logic of Working Class Collective Action

In ‘Rationality and Revolution’ Nancy Holmstrom addresses an issue that has gained considerable currency among social and political theorists. She asks what insight, if any, Marxists might glean from rational choice accounts of radical working class collective action. The purpose of this comment is to argue that Holmstrom’s unfavorable estimation of rational choice accounts is ill-conceived.Holmstrom raises two basic objections to rational choice explanations of working class collective action. First, she contends that such accounts are limited, inadequate or incomplete and indicates several manifestations of this purported deficiency. Second, Holmstrom alleges that rational choice accounts are ideologically suspect and, as such, fundamentally at odds with Marxist explanations of revolutionary action. Holmstrom appears to believe that this second line of criticism ‘follows’ (309, 318) in some sense upon the first. H so, it would be sufficient to establish the error of her initial line of argument. Because neither of her criticisms can withstand scrutiny, however, independent reasons will be advanced for rejecting each.

French Strike Development and Class Struggle

The strike, an organized work stoppage to compel employers to accept workers' demands, is a form of class struggle that predates the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century, however, the strike became one of the most common forms of collective action in Western Europe and a major expression of class struggle. “No doubt concerted work stoppages date back as far as organized work itself,” write Shorter and Tilly (1974: 34), “but the form of work stoppage we call the strike became a standardized and frequent form of collective action in western countries with the industrialization of the nineteenth and twentieth century.” Sociologists and historians have generally recognized that the nineteenth century marked the emergence of the strike as an important form of working-class collective action, but they have offered diverse interpretations as to why early industrialization generated intense strike activity.