On the way to the Soviet Mexico: the Comintern and the Communist Party of Mexico at the period of its illegal activities, 1929-1934

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-60
Author(s):  
Victor Jeifets ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Left Turn ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Illegal Activities ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
Intensive Development

This article deals with the evolution and peculiarities of the policy of Mexican communists who were forced to operate underground after the beginning of the "left turn" in the late 1920s. During this period, the CPM actually abandoned its own interpretation of the problems of the revolution in its country, being satisfied with the policies and assessments of the Comintern apparatus. The author's attention is paid to both the party's course towards attempts to penetrate the army structures, as also to new forms of activity (after the collapse of the policy of broad alliances) in the labor movement, among the unemployed and peasant organizations; they were all aimed at achieving the goal of the seizure of power by the workers and peasants; in 1929-1934 the Communist Party of Mexico virtually excluded the anti-imperialist component from its sphere of activity. The crisis in the reformist sector of the labor movement contributed to the intensive development of an independent labor movement, the path to which the Mexican Communists tried to find, however, this activity was complicated by the presence of a number of serious competitors. During this period, the communists concentrated their efforts on working in the nation-wide branch trade unions, which created the groundwork for new growth. At the same time, the CPM did not understand neither the significance of the figure of the progressive politician Lazaro Cardenas, nor the consequences of the regrouping within the ruling elites, and with great difficulty renounced sectarian politics.

The Mensheviks and NEP Society in Russia

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Brovkin
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
New Period ◽  
History Of

AbstractContemporary scholarship on the development of the Soviet political system in the 1920s has largely bypassed the history of the Menshevik opposition. Those historians who regard NEP as a mere transition to Stalinism have dismissed the Menshevik experience as irrelevant,1 and those who see a democratic potential in the NEP system have focused on the free debates in the Communist party (CP), the free peasantry, the market economy, and the free arts.2 This article aims to revise some aspects of both interpretations. The story of the Mensheviks was not over by 1921. On the contrary, NEP opened a new period in the struggles over independent trade unions and elections to the Soviets; over the plight of workers and the whims of the Red Directors; over the Cheka terror and the Menshevik strategies of coping with Bolshevism. The Menshevik experience sheds new light on the transformation of the political process and the institutional changes in the Soviet regime in the course of NEP. In considering the major facets of the Menshevik opposition under NEP, I shall focus on the election campaign to the Soviets during the transition to NEP, subsequent Bolshevik-Menshevik relations, and the writings in the Menshevik underground samizdat press.

scholarly journals Race and Class in the Postwar World: The Southern African Labour Congress

2018 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 133-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Money
Keyword(s):  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
White Men ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
International Labor ◽  
Regional Labor ◽  
White Workers ◽  
International Labor Movement ◽  
Political Radicalism ◽  
National Framework

AbstractUnderstandings of class have often been highly racialized and gendered. This article examines the efforts of white workers’ organizations in Southern Africa during the 1940s to forge such a class identity across the region and disseminate it among the international labor movement. For these organizations, the “real” working class was composed of white men who worked in mines, factories, and on the railways, something pertinent to contemporary understandings of class.The focus of these efforts was the Southern African Labour Congress, which brought together white trade unions and labor parties and sought to secure a place for them in the postwar world. These organizations embodied the politics of “white laborism,” an ideology which fused political radicalism and white domination, and they enjoyed some success in gaining acceptance in the international labor movement. Although most labor histories of the region have adopted a national framework, this article offers an integrated regional labor history.

Mobilization without Movement: How the Chinese State “Fixed” Labor Insurgency

ILR Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1029-1052 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Chen ◽  
Mary Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Labor Disputes ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
Labor Legislation ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Organized Action

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of two recent labor disputes in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, this article asks: Why has a broad-based labor movement failed to emerge in contemporary China? Both pro-labor legislation and the existence of movement-oriented labor NGOs appear to provide opportunities and resources for workers to engage in organized action to expand workers’ rights. Two political mechanisms, however, help explain why a strong labor movement has not developed: 1) legislation and courtroom procedures and 2) official institutions that monopolize the space for representation—specifically the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). We call these two mechanisms “political fixes” and discuss how they interact to engender a feedback between the fragmentation of collective action during labor conflict and the continuous uptick in labor insurgency. This article contributes to labor movement theory: It puts greater emphasis on the institutional mechanisms that constrain labor, as opposed to sheer repression or economic factors.

White Workers and the American Civil War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Zonderman
Keyword(s):  
Labor Unions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Southern States ◽  
White Workers ◽  
Military Discipline ◽  
North And South ◽  
National Trade ◽  
Industry Associations

From the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 until the Confederacy surrendered in the spring of 1865, workers—North and South—labored long hours under often trying conditions at wages that rarely kept pace with wartime inflation. Though many workers initially voiced skepticism of plans for sundering the nation, once Southern states seceded most workers rallied round their rival flags and pledged to support their respective war efforts. The growing demand for war material opened employment opportunities for women and men, girls and boys, across the Union and Confederacy. Yet workers were not always satisfied with a job and appeals to back the boys in blue and gray without question. They often resisted changes pressed on them in the workplace—new technology, military discipline, unskilled newcomers—as well as wages that always lagged behind rising prices. Protests and strikes began in 1861 and increased in number and intensity from 1863 to the war’s conclusion. Labor unions, in decline since the depression of 1857, sprung back to life, especially in the war’s later years. Employers sometimes countered their employees’ increasing organization and resistance with industry associations that tried to break strikes and blacklist those who walked off their jobs. While worker discontent and resentment of “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” were common across the sectional divide, Northern workers exercised greater coordination of their resistance through citywide trade assemblies, national trade unions, traveling organizers, and labor newspapers. Southern workers tended to fight their labor battles in isolation from shop to shop and town to town, so they rarely built a broader labor movement that could survive the hardships of the postwar era.

From looking backwards to forwards: unemployment insurance, France, 2000

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-90
Author(s):  
Magnus Paulsen Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Job Seeking ◽  
Job Offers ◽  
Unemployment Insurance System ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Intense Debate

Chapter 4 presents the reform process of the so-called PARE (‘aid plan for the return to employment’) of the French unemployment insurance system in 2000. The instruments of PARE included an individual contract that would oblige the unemployed to engage in ‘personalised’ job seeking activities while getting access to support such as training courses. Further, PARE strengthened requirements to accept job offers from the job exchange service as well as sanctions upon refusals and contractual infringements. The trade unions were divided in their stance towards this, causing intense debate, especially on the use of sanctions. The reform illustrates how the addition of a rather simple instrument radically changed the moral status of the unemployed.

Labor Union Resistance to Economic Liberalization in India: What Can National and State Level Patterns of Protests against Privatization Tell Us??

Asian Survey ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 860-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Uba
Keyword(s):  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
State Level ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
State Variation ◽  
Political Party Affiliation

Abstract This article examines mobilization of the Indian labor movement by using a unique data set on protests against privatization in India during 1991 to 2003. The results demonstrate an intensified labor struggle against economic reforms and significant inter-state variation. The latter is only partially explained by the trade unions' political party affiliation.

The Southeast Was Red: Left-State Alliances and Popular Mobilizations in Yucatán, 1930–1940

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fallaw
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Political System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
Local Levels

Between 1935 and 1940, President Lázaro Cárdenas of Mexico mobilized a populist coalition in support of land reform, workers’ rights, and a more inclusive political system. For years, scholars either ignored the crucial role of the Mexican Communist Party (Partido Comunista Mexicano [PCM]) inCardenismo, or considered it a tool used and then discarded by the emerging national state (Shulgovski 1968; Anguiano 1975; Ianni 1977). Recently, Barry Carr’s monumental study (1992) of the ambiguous relationship between the PCM and the Mexican state argued convincingly that Cárdenas relied on the party to mobilize popular forces, while never incorporating either the PCM or Communist ideology into his project. Much less is known of Mexican Communism below the national level. Its social base, and its importance on the regional and local levels, remains largely unexplored outside of a few areas (Friedrich 1986: 128; Craig 1990; Carr 1987). Although the southeastern state of Yucatán boasted one of the PCM’s largest and most active regional organizations in the 1930s, and although Yucatán served as a crucial testing ground for Cárdenas’s reforms, the Yucatecan Left and its popular base has yet to be thoroughly examined.

Trade Union Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Bernards
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Political Role ◽  
International Labor ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
International Labor Movement ◽  
The Unemployed

Although unionized workers have rarely represented more than a small minority of the population anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, trade unions have played, and continue to play, a significant political role. Trade unions still occupy strategic choke points in many African economies, particularly around transport infrastructure, and retain a spatially concentrated organizational base as well as a degree of symbolic power drawn from participation in struggles against colonialism, apartheid, and authoritarianism. Three persistent dilemmas have strongly shaped the role of African trade unions and driven much of the academic debate about them. First are debates about the relationships between trade unions and political parties. These date to the often-fraught relationships between unions and anti-colonial movements in the last years of colonial rule. Pitched struggles, both within trade unions and between unions and governing parties, were often fought in the decade after the end of formal colonization over the degree of autonomy that unions should have from governing parties. These were often resolved through the widespread repression of politically independent unionism in the 1970s. This relationship, however, became untenable under processes of structural adjustment, and unions have often played a significant role in protests against neoliberal reforms, which have spurred widespread political transformation. Second are debates about the relationships of trade unions to non-unionized workers, especially the unemployed or the “informal” sector. Critics on both left and right have long pointed to the relatively privileged position of trade unions. This has consistently been invoked by governments seeking to justify the limited political role of trade unions as well as policies for wage restraint, state retrenchment, or currency devaluation that have negatively affected organized labor. However, given the increasingly widespread nature of informality and unemployment in contemporary Africa, trade unions have begun to make tentative steps toward organizing informal and unemployed workers in some cases. Finally, the relationships of African unions to the international labor movement and to international organizations have often been important. African unions have frequently drawn on links to international trade unions, regional institutions, or the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a way of compensating for domestic weaknesses. These strategies, however, have often engendered significant conflicts around the differing objectives of African and metropolitan actors, between African unions over access to international resources, and concerning “imperialism” by American and European unions.

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