“You understand we are radical” The United Mine Workers of America, District 18 and The One Big Union, 1919-1920 (original) (raw)
2009, Socialist History Project
From 1917 to 1920, the miners of District 18 became more radical. This growth of radical class consciousness built on previous traditions of socialism and class struggle among the miners, which then combined with contemporary radicalising forces such as war-time conditions and the Russian Revolution to impel the miners of District 18 to further revolutionary development. This development culminated in secession from the UMWA and the formation of the OBU, an industrial union openly committed to overthrowing capitalism and instituting a soviet system of government in Canada. I will further argue that the formation of the OBU, with its radicalised class consciousness and class solidarity across ethnic lines, was an example of the “class moment.”
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Related papers
Anarchism and the working class: the union of Russian workers in the North American labor movement
2018
Thousands of Russian anarchist immigrants, organized by the Union of Russian Workers (URW), took part in a surging union movement and strike wave that broke out across North America in the 1910s. However, they have received scant attention from historians, and no account of the URW exists. My dissertation fills in this gap by detailing the activity of the URW against the background of the rising labor movement, and it considers the question of anarchism's relationship to the working class. Historians have traditionally situated anarchism outside of the labor movement, yet the Russian anarchists in North America joined both radical and mainstream unions, and URW leaders recruited migrants explicitly by appealing to their class interests as foreign workers exploited by American capitalism. The study highlights the anarchists' involvement in labor organizing, and it centers their perspectives to help narrate a history of the period. It first traces a history of the international anarchist movement along with migration patterns to North America in order to contextualize the research and shed light on the origins of the URW and why their story matters. Utilizing anarchist publications, local English-language newspapers, government surveillance files, and archival materials, the study finds that URW members made a wide array of contributions to the emerging industrial union movement in the United States and developed a critique of American capitalism that ranged beyond the immediate strikes. It argues that alongside the Industrial Workers of the World, the URW helped to push labor to the left and prepare the ground for the rise of major industrial unions with socialist leanings in the 1930s. Simultaneously, the study shows how the URW harnessed its strength in North America to make substantial material contributions to the anarchist movement in Russia, in the lead up to the 1917 revolution, while developing an anti-Bolshevik critique also echoed by subsequent movements on the left. By locating Russian anarchism and the URW in the labor movement, this study challenges historiographical claims which deny anarchism's working-class character. Thus, it contributes to a growing body of newer research which finds the anarchist movement rooted in labor and workingclass organizing. Anarchism; Working Class, Russian; North America; IWW
Red Scare Scholarship, Class Conflict, and the Case of the Anarchist Union of Russian Workers, 1919
Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 2017
O n Friday night, 7 November 1919, U.S. government personnel raided dozens of Union of Russian Workers (URW) locals in at least 18 cities and towns across eight states, arresting 1,182 Russian immigrants suspected of being anarchist members of the URW. Nearly all were beaten up and bloodied while agents ransacked the buildings, smashing windows, furniture, and stairwells. Orchestrated by the Justice Department via its Bureau of Investigation (BI), the objectives of the so-called Palmer raids, named after U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, were to round up everyone present, secure internal URW papers, and eventually deport as many members as possible to destroy the organization. Of the people detained during the raids that night, 439 were held for formal deportation hearings. Following the 7 November raids, in the early hours of 21 December 1919, approximately 200 URW members were deported to Soviet Russia alongside roughly 35 unaffiliated Russian anarchists, notably the famou...
When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to 1921
2018
Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents List of Figures and Tables ix Introduction 1 Part 1 The 1877 Railroad Strike 1 Suppressing a Volcano: The 1877 Railroad Strike 35 2 'We Shall Consume Their Shops with Fire': Working-Class Recomposition in the 1877 Railroad Strike 114 3 Putting Out the Class on Fire: A New Capital Composition 148 Part 2 The 1894 Railroad Strike 4 The Nineties Dripped with Blood: The 1894 Railroad Strike 193 5 Government by Injunction and Bayonet: Working-Class Recomposition in the 1894 Railroad Strike 252 6 Managing the Class Struggle: A New Capital Composition 298 Part 3 Revolt of the Rank and File 7 The Dynamite Conspiracy: US Steel vs. the Iron Workers 325 8 War in Europe, War on Capital: The WWI Wildcat Strike Wave 369 9 Revolt of the Rank and File: The Steel and Seattle General Strikes 455 10 The Redneck Army: West Virginia Mine War 485 Conclusion 555 Bibliography 563 Index 583 Tables 1 US rail system 1850-1900 41 2 Proportion of railroad strikes involving sympathy strikes 139 3
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.