205-477: Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the labour movement that, through industrial unionism , seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes and other forms of direct action , with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of production and the economy at large through social ownership . Syndicalist unions first emerged in Spain and North America in
410-417: A power struggle between competing interest groups . In such a model, revolutions happen when two or more groups cannot come to terms within the current political system 's normal decision-making process, and when they possess the required resources to employ force in pursuit of their goals. The second-generation theorists regarded the development of revolutionary situations as a two-step process: "First,
615-480: A Catholic priest and IWW leader, "dropping pieces of paper into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation for the working class, and to my thinking it will never achieve it." Syndicalist trade unions declared their political neutrality and autonomy from political parties. Syndicalists reasoned that political parties grouped people according to their political views, uniting members of different classes, while unions were to be purely working-class organizations, uniting
820-601: A History of the European Family in New Zealand co-authored by Olssen in 1978, was seen by two New Zealand historians Bronwyn Labrum and Bronwyn Dalley as being influential in shifting the historiography of New Zealand toward more of a "social historical approach". In acknowledging that comment, Olssen explained that the article had resulted from him coming into contact with feminism because research by his co-author Andrée Lévesque into women's history had uncovered much that
1025-471: A bastion of radicalism since 1905, against what they saw as the rule of a small number of bureaucrats. Anarchists hailed the rebellion as the start of the third revolution. The government reacted by having anarchists throughout the country arrested, including a number of syndicalist leaders. The Russian syndicalist movement was thereby defeated. Syndicalists in the West who had opposed World War I reacted gushingly to
1230-655: A biography of John A. Lee , and a history of Otago . Olssen was an academic in the Department of History at the University of Otago from 1969 until his retirement in 2002, when he was conferred with the title of emeritus professor . Olssen was born in Hamilton on 14 December 1941. He was educated at King's High School in Dunedin from 1955 to 1960, being inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2021. In 1964 Olssen graduated from
1435-659: A black fellow worker against a racist insult, an IWW organizer in Louisiana insisted that "he is a man, a union man, an IWW—a MAN! ... and he has proven it by his action." During World War I, one of the IWW's anti-war slogans was "Don't Be a Soldier! Be a Man!" In some cases, syndicalist attitudes towards women changed. In 1901, the CGT's agricultural union in southern France was hostile to women; by 1909, this had changed. The CNT, initially hostile to independent women's organizations, worked closely with
1640-457: A broader audience. Sorel presented himself as the premier theorist of syndicalism and was frequently thought of as such but was not a part of the movement, and his influence on syndicalism was insignificant, except in Italy and Poland. The extent to which syndicalist positions reflected merely the views of leaders and to what extent those positions were shared by syndicalist organizations' rank-and-file
1845-501: A change in social and political institutions. Jeff Goodwin offers two definitions. First, a broad one, including "any and all instances in which a state or a political regime is overthrown and thereby transformed by a popular movement in an irregular, extraconstitutional or violent fashion". Second, a narrow one, in which "revolutions entail not only mass mobilization and regime change , but also more or less rapid and fundamental social, economic or cultural change, during or soon after
2050-610: A few months from 1910 to 1911. French influence also spread through publications. Pouget's pamphlets could be read in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, and Swedish translations. Journals and newspapers in a number of countries advocated syndicalism. For example, L'Action directe , a journal mainly for miners in Charleroi , Belgium, urged its readers to follow "the example of our confederated friends of France". The IWW's newspapers published articles on French syndicalism, particularly
2255-465: A focus on political behavior "from below", but also a recognition of moments where "high and low" are relativized, subverted, or made irrelevant, and where the micro and macro levels fuse together in critical conjunctions. Economist Douglass North raised a note of caution about revolutionary change, how it "is never as revolutionary as its rhetoric would have us believe". While the "formal rules" of laws and constitutions can be changed virtually overnight,
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#17330858210732460-529: A follow-up document, the Health sub report (2015) , Olssen discussed demographic trends relating to mortality, morbidity, and fertility in New Zealand, evaluated health services and explored the determinants of health. In the 2002 Queen's Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours List , Olssen was awarded The Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (O.N.Z.M.) for services to historical research. Olssen received
2665-459: A general strike, which continued after FORA IX reached a settlement. Vigilantes, supported by business and the military, attacked unions and militants. In all, between 100 and 700 people died in what became known as the Tragic Week . Nevertheless, strikes continued to increase and both FORA V and IX grew. The United States underwent an increase in labor militancy during the post-war period. 1919 saw
2870-527: A growing numbers of casualties at the front eroded the enthusiasm and patriotism the outbreak of war had aroused. Prices were on the rise, food was scarce, and it became increasingly clear that the war would not be short. In Germany, food shortages led to demonstrations and riots in a number of cities in the summer of 1916. At the same time, anti-war demonstrations started. Strikes picked up from around 1916 or 1917 on across Europe and soldiers began to mutiny . Workers distrusted their socialist leaders who had joined
3075-415: A local rather than a national level. Raewyn Dalziel of The University of Auckland held that Olssen's acquaintance with "feminist and post-modern theory" positioned him to analyse the role of women in "work, politics and society", acknowledging he used reliable sources that showed data for most women were excluded if they did not work for wages. Questions did remain for the writer about whether some of
3280-431: A mix of industrial unionism and socialist Irish republicanism , and was labeled Larkinism. There was a significant uptick in workers' radicalism in most developed capitalist states from 1911 to 1922, although it relented during World War I. Strikes increased in frequency, numbers of workers involved, and duration. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, syndicalism was only one way this radicalization expressed itself. In
3485-525: A more restrictive definition of syndicalism based on five criteria: This definition excludes the IWW and the Canadian One Big Union (OBU), which sought to unite all workers in one general organization. Peterson proposes the broader category revolutionary industrial unionism to encompass syndicalism, groups like the IWW and the OBU, and others. Revolutionary industrial unionism, part of syndicalism in
3690-481: A narrow definition of work. When interviewed about Working Lives Olssen said that in the 1870s and 80s "the values and habits of life that evolved among the working men and women" in Dunedin were also reflected nationally. In Landfall magazine freelance writer, reviewer, artist, and musician James Dignan agreed with this position. Revisiting the history of organized labour in Dunedin in the book, Olssen, suggested that
3895-470: A number of labor disputes. Finally, van der Linden and Thorpe point to spatial and geographical factors that shaped the rise of syndicalism. Workers who would otherwise not have had an inclination to syndicalism joined because syndicalism was dominant in their locales. For example, workers in the Canadian and American West were generally more radical and drawn to the IWW and One Big Union than their counterparts in
4100-575: A number of organizations or currents within the labor movement that did not identify as syndicalist . They apply the label to one big unionists or industrial unionists in North America and Australia, Larkinists (named after the Irish ITGWU leader James Larkin ) in Ireland, and groups that identify as revolutionary industrialists, revolutionary unionists, anarcho-syndicalists , or councilists. This includes
4305-412: A pattern of events arises that somehow marks a break or change from previous patterns. This change then affects some critical variable—the cognitive state of the masses, the equilibrium of the system, or the magnitude of conflict and resource control of competing interest groups. If the effect on the critical variable is of sufficient magnitude, a potentially revolutionary situation occurs." Once this point
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#17330858210734510-426: A rather limited practical struggle against World War I, they also looked to challenge the war on an ideological or cultural level. They pointed to the horrors of war and spurned efforts to legitimate it as something noble. German syndicalists drew attention to the death, injury, destruction, and misery that the war wrought. German, Swedish, Dutch, and Spanish syndicalists denounced nationalism with Tierra y Libertad ,
4715-816: A recent military defeat, or economic chaos, or an affront to national pride and identity, or pervasive repression and corruption. Revolutions typically trigger counter-revolutions which seek to halt revolutionary momentum, or to reverse the course of an ongoing revolutionary transformation. Notable revolutions in recent centuries include the American Revolution (1775–1783), French Revolution (1789–1799), Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), Spanish American wars of independence (1808–1826), Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Xinhai Revolution in China in 1911, Revolutions of 1917–1923 in Europe (including
4920-433: A result of hundreds of arrests, ultimately forcing public officials to rescind such laws. Sabotage ranged from slow or inefficient work to destruction of machinery and physical violence. French railway and postal workers cut telegraph and signal lines during strikes in 1909 and 1910. The final step towards revolution according to syndicalists would be a general strike. According to Griffuelhes, it would be "the curtain drop on
5125-635: A revolutionary wave, inspired in part by Russia, swept Europe in the following years. In Germany, strikes and protests against food shortage, mainly by women, escalated and by 1917 had eroded public confidence in the government. The abdication of Wilhelm II in November 1918 after the Kiel mutiny by sailors sparked an insurrectionary movement throughout the country that led to the German Revolution of 1918–19 . The syndicalist FVdG, which had just 6,000 members before
5330-495: A rival to the bourses but was at first much weaker. From the start, it advocated the general strike and aimed to unite all workers. Pouget, who was active in the CGT, supported the use of sabotage and direct action. In 1902, the bourses merged into the CGT. In 1906, the federation adopted the Charter of Amiens , which reaffirmed the CGT's independence from party politics and fixed the goal of uniting all French workers. In 1905,
5535-632: A series of successful strikes in 1913 in Mexico City and central Mexico. After the Constitutionalist Army occupied the capital in 1914, syndicalists allied with the government it established to defeat rural forces such as the Zapatistas and therefore received government support. Once those forces had been suppressed, this alliance broke apart and the Casa campaigned for workers' control of factories and
5740-540: A strategy known as dual unionism . American syndicalists formed the IWW, although William Z. Foster later abandoned the IWW after a trip to France and set up the Syndicalist League of North America (SLNA), which sought to radicalize the established American Federation of Labor (AFL). In Ireland, the ITGWU broke away from a more moderate, and British-based, union. In Italy and Spain , syndicalists initially worked within
5945-505: A syndicalist journal in Barcelona, calling it a "grotesque mentality". The Dutch newspaper De Arbeid criticized nationalism, because "it finds its embodiment in the state and is the denial of class antagonism between the haves and the have-nots". German and Spanish syndicalists went further still by putting into question the concept of nationhood itself and dismissing it as a mere social construct. The Germans observed that most inhabitants of
6150-467: A tired old scene of several centuries, and the curtain raising on another". Syndicalists remained vague about the society they envisioned to replace capitalism, stating that it was impossible to foresee in detail. Labor unions were seen as being the embryo of a new society in addition to being the means of struggle within the old. Syndicalists generally agreed that in a free society production would be managed by workers. The state apparatus would be replaced by
6355-585: A viable strategy because the general strike became a practical possibility. Although it had been advocated before, there were not sufficient numbers of wage workers to bring society to a standstill and they had not achieved a sufficient degree of organization and solidarity until the 1890s, according van der Linden and Thorpe. Several general or political strikes then took place before World War I: in 1893 and in 1902 in Belgium, in 1902 and in 1909 in Sweden, in 1903 in
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6560-504: Is a New Zealand historian whose research focuses on the linkages between social structures, politics, and the world of ideas at four spatial domains – the local, provincial, national and global. His early research examined labour history, especially the working-class mobilisation in New Zealand from 1880 to 1940 and included a study of Caversham , regarded as one of the most industrialised areas of New Zealand at that time. He has published several articles and monographs, including
6765-486: Is a matter of dispute. Commenting on French syndicalism, the historian Peter Stearns concludes that most workers did not identify with syndicalism's long-range goals, and that syndicalist hegemony accounts for the relatively slow growth of the French labor movement as a whole. He says that workers who joined the syndicalist movement were on the whole indifferent to doctrinal questions, their membership in syndicalist organizations
6970-571: Is but one bargain that the Industrial Workers of the World will make with the employing class – complete surrender of the means of production." The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation ( Federación Obrera Regional Argentina , FORA) and the OBU accepted such deals, and others began accepting them eventually. Similarly, syndicalist unions did not work to build large strike funds, for fear that they would create bureaucracy separate from
7175-414: Is justified to group together such a wide range of organizations because their similar modes of action or practice outweigh their ideological differences. Others, such as Larry Peterson and Erik Olssen , disagree with this broad definition. According to Olssen, this understanding has a "tendency to blur the distinctions between industrial unionism, syndicalism, and revolutionary socialism ". Peterson gives
7380-599: Is reached, a negative incident (a war, a riot, a bad harvest) that in the past might not have been enough to trigger a revolt, will now be enough. However, if authorities are cognizant of the danger, they can still prevent revolution through reform or repression. In his influential 1938 book The Anatomy of Revolution , historian Crane Brinton established a convention by choosing four major political revolutions— England (1642) , Thirteen Colonies of America (1775) , France (1789) , and Russia (1917) —for comparative study. He outlined what he called their "uniformities", although
7585-610: The 1917–1919 Brazil strike movement and cycle of labor struggles. It included a general strike in 1917, a failed uprising in 1918 inspired by the Russian Revolution, and a number of smaller strikes. The movement was put down by increased organization by employers to resist workers' demands and by government repression, including the closure of unions, arrests, deportations of foreign militants, and violence, with some 200 workers killed in São Paulo alone. In Argentina, FORA had split into
7790-455: The American Revolution deviated somewhat from the pattern. As a result, most later comparative studies of revolution substituted China (1949) in their lists, but they continued Brinton's practice of focusing on four. In subsequent decades, scholars began to classify hundreds of other events as revolutions (see List of revolutions and rebellions ). Their expanded notion of revolution engendered new approaches and explanations. The theories of
7995-729: The Dublin Lockout . After Larkin left Ireland in 1914, James Connolly took over leadership of the union. Because of the organization's weakness, Connolly allied it along with its paramilitary force, the Irish Citizen Army , with the Irish Republican Brotherhood . Together, they instigated the Easter Rising , seeking to weaken the British Empire and hoping that the insurrection would spread throughout Europe. The uprising
8200-807: The Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD), and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA). Although they did not regard themselves as syndicalists, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (nicknamed "Wobblies") in the United States, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU), and the Canadian One Big Union (OBU) are considered by most historians to belong to this current. The International Workers' Association – Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (IWA–AIT), which
8405-762: The French Section of the Workers' International in the struggle against the Three-Year Law of 1913 , which extended conscription. During the Spanish Civil War , the CNT, whose policy barred anyone who had been a candidate for political office or had participated in political endeavors from representing it, was intimately connected with the Iberian Anarchist Federation ( Federación Anarquista Ibérica , FAI). In
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8610-427: The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the United States, which claimed its industrial unionism was "a higher type of revolutionary labor organization than that proposed by the syndicalists". Van der Linden and Thorpe use syndicalism to refer to "all revolutionary, direct-actionist organizations". Darlington proposes that syndicalism be defined as "revolutionary trade unionism". He and van der Linden argue that it
8815-718: The Otago Settlers Museum and the Caversham Project Team, acknowledged the project. The Skilled Workers: Journeymen and Masters in Caversham, 1880–1914 (1988). Co-authored by Olssen, this was the first systematic study of mobility in the New Zealand Journal of History. This article informed the investigation of the role played by skilled workers in the process of class formation and how this shaped later political developments in New Zealand. The Power of
9020-659: The Russian Provisional Government . Immediately, anarchist groups emerged. Russian syndicalists organized around the journal Golos Truda ( The Voice of Labor ), which had a circulation of around 25,000, and the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda. Anarchists found themselves agreeing with the Bolsheviks led by Lenin, who returned to Russia in April, as both sought to bring down the provisional government. Lenin abandoned
9225-519: The Russian Revolution and German Revolution ), Chinese Communist Revolution (1927–1949), decolonization of Africa (mid-1950s to 1975), Cuban Revolution in 1959, Iranian Revolution and Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, worldwide Revolutions of 1989 , and Arab Spring in the early 2010s. The French noun revolucion traces back to the 13th century, and the English equivalent "revolution" to
9430-517: The Seattle general strike , large miners' strikes, the Boston police strike , and the nationwide steel strike of 1919 . The IWW had been nearly destroyed in the previous two years by local criminal syndicalism laws, the federal government, and vigilante violence. It attempted to take credit for some of the strikes, although in reality it was too weak to play a significant role. The First Red Scare intensified
9635-615: The Te Rangi Hiroa Medal in 2001. Olssen's publication Building the New World: work, politics and society in Caversham, 1880s–1920s , won the J.E. Sherrard Prize , 1996. In 1978 Olssen's book John A. Lee was placed 2nd in the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards . The Erik Olssen Prize named in recognition of Olssen's work as a historian, is awarded biennially by The New Zealand Historical Association for
9840-475: The University of Otago with a Bachelor of Arts and with Master of Arts (1st Class Honours) in 1965, both in history and political science. His master's thesis, John Alexander Lee: the stormy petrel: his ideas, their inspiration and influence and his attempts to translate his ideas into legislation , was completed in 1965. After five years at Duke University , he completed a doctorate, a study of Dissent from Normalcy: Congressional Progressivism, 1918–25 and
10045-405: The anarcho-communist FORA V and the syndicalist FORA IX. While FORA V called for a futile general strike in 1915, FORA IX was more careful. It called off general strikes it had planned in 1917 and 1918. In January 1919, five workers were by the authorities during a strike led by a union with tenuous links to FORA V. At the funeral, police killed another 39 workers. Both FORA organizations called for
10250-471: The anti-authoritarian wing of the early International Workingmen's Association (IWA), the first international socialist organization formed in 1864. Its most successful early leader, Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin , came to believe that worker organizations should consider using force to advance their cause, when necessary. He and his followers advocated the general strike, rejected electoral politics, and anticipated workers' organizations replacing rule by
10455-598: The class struggle in the minds of many workers, as these parties were thought to be overly concerned with building the parties themselves and with electoral politics than with the class struggle, and had therefore lost their original revolutionary edge. The socialists preached the inevitability of socialism but were in practice bureaucratic and reformist. Similarly, the trade unions frequently allied with those parties, equally growing in numbers, were denounced for their expanding bureaucracies, their centralization, and for failing to represent workers' interests. Between 1902 and 1913,
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#173308582107310660-515: The nationalization of foreign capital. It contributed to a rise in labor unrest that began in mid-1915. It led general strikes in May and in July–August 1916 in greater Mexico City. The latter was quelled by the army, marking the defeat of the Casa , which was also suppressed. In Portugal, the 5 October 1910 revolution that led to the deposition of the king was followed by a strike wave throughout
10865-413: The theory of historical trajectory , which represented the idea that capitalism is a necessary stage on Russia's path to communism, dismissed the establishment of a parliament in favor of that power being taken by soviets , and called for the abolition of the police, the army, the bureaucracy, and finally the state – all sentiments syndicalists shared. Although the syndicalists also welcomed
11070-599: The violent Islamic revolution in Afghanistan . At the same time, this definition is strong enough to exclude coups, revolts, civil wars, and rebellions that make no effort to transform institutions or the justification for authority." Goldstone's definition excludes peaceful transitions to democracy through plebiscite or free elections , as occurred in Spain after the death of Francisco Franco , or in Argentina and Chile after
11275-457: The "change and continuities of gendering in work." Class, Gender and the Vote (2005). This book was the result of a collaboration between some members of the team and a group of academics at the University of Canterbury headed by Professor Miles Fairburn. Olssen co-edited the book and contributed the chapter Marriage Patterns in Dunedin's Southern Suburbs, 1881–1938 which continued to explore
11480-497: The "informal constraints" such as institutional inertia and cultural inheritance do not change quickly and thereby slow down the societal transformation. According to North, the tension between formal rules and informal constraints is "typically resolved by some restructuring of the overall constraints—in both directions—to produce a new equilibrium that is far less revolutionary than the rhetoric." Erik Olssen Erik Newland Olssen ONZM FRSNZ (born 14 December 1941)
11685-490: The "slow revolution" type identified by Tocqueville. Political and socioeconomic revolutions have been studied in many social sciences , particularly sociology , political science and history . Scholars of revolution differentiate four generations of theoretical research on the subject of revolution. Theorists of the first generation, including Gustave Le Bon , Charles A. Ellwood , and Pitirim Sorokin , were mainly descriptive in their approach, and their explanations of
11890-674: The 1870s, before rising to prominence in France and later emerging on other continents. Syndicalist movements were most predominant amongst the socialist movement during the interwar period that preceded the outbreak of World War II . Major syndicalist organizations included the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) in France, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in Spain, the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI),
12095-446: The 1915 Zimmerwald conference . They faced considerable difficulties putting up meaningful resistance against the war. The government called up militants to the Army, including Monatte, who considered refusing the order and being summarily executed; he decided this would be futile. Syndicalist organizations in other countries nearly unanimously opposed the war. In neutral Spain, José Negre of
12300-481: The 1970 and 1980s because he felt socialism offered a way toward justice and equality in New Zealand and his involvement in the working-class Caversham branch of the Labour Party, allowed him to study the development and mobilisation of a working-class community. His work on John A. Lee as the subject of his thesis, showed Olssen there was little historiography related to the development of socialism in New Zealand at
12505-532: The 66-member Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee , which included four anarchists, among them the syndicalist Shatov. On 25 October, this committee led the October Revolution ; after taking control of the Winter Palace and key points in the capital with little resistance, it proclaimed a Soviet government. Anarchists were jubilant at the toppling of the provisional government. They were concerned about
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#173308582107312710-471: The Australian syndicalist movement were influenced by them, as well as older socialist notions. According to Darlington, anarchism, Marxism, and revolutionary trade unionism equally contributed to syndicalism, in addition to various influences in specific countries, including Blanquism , anti-clericalism , republicanism , and agrarian radicalism . Bill Haywood , an American syndicalist and leading figure in
12915-538: The CNT declared: "Let Germany win, let France win, it is all the same to the workers." The CNT insisted that syndicalists could support neither side in an imperialist conflict. A wave of pro-British sentiment swept Ireland during the war, although the ITGWU and the rest of the Irish labor movement opposed it, and half of the ITGWU's membership enlisted in the British military. The ITGWU had also been significantly weakened in 1913 in
13120-449: The Chicago labor movement of the 1880s. They were involved in the nationwide struggle for an eight-hour day . On 3 May 1886, the police killed three striking workers at a demonstration in Chicago. Seven policemen and four workers were killed the following day when someone, possibly a police member, threw a bomb into the crowd. Four anarchists were eventually executed for allegedly conspiring to
13325-552: The Czar, followed by a rural revolution, followed by the Bolshevik coup in November. Katz also cross-classified revolutions as follows: A further dimension to Katz's typology is that revolutions are either against (anti-monarchy, anti-dictatorial, anti-communist, anti-democratic) or for (pro-fascism, pro-communism, pro-nationalism, etc.). In the latter cases, a transition period is generally necessary to decide which direction to take to achieve
13530-623: The East, so we believed, the sun of freedom rose." The Spanish CNT declared: "Bolshevism is the name, but the idea is that of all revolutions: economic freedom. ... Bolshevism is the new life for which we struggle, it is freedom, harmony, justice, it is the life that we want and will enforce in the world." Borghi recalled: "We exulted in its victories. We trembled at its risks. ... We made a symbol and an altar of its name, its dead, its living and its heroes." He called on Italians to "do as they did in Russia". Indeed,
13735-421: The East. Similarly, southern workers were more drawn to syndicalism in Italy. According to Altena, the emergence of syndicalism must be analyzed at the level of local communities. Only differences in local social and economic structures explain why some towns had a strong syndicalist presence, while others did not. Syndicalism was not informed by theory or a systematically elaborated ideology the same way socialism
13940-566: The FVdG, although industrial unionists, whose influence was dwindling, were also involved. Rudolf Rocker , an anarchist recently returned to Germany after spending several years in London, wrote the FAUD's program. Class struggle peaked in Italy in the years 1919–1920, which became known as the biennio rosso or red biennium. Throughout this wave of labor radicalism, syndicalists, along with anarchists, formed
14145-435: The French General Confederation of Labor ( Confédération générale du travail , CGT) came to use the term to describe its brand of unionism. Revolutionary syndicalism , or more commonly syndicalism with the revolutionary implied, was then adapted to a number of languages by unionists following the French model. Many scholars, including Ralph Darlington , Marcel van der Linden , and Wayne Thorpe, apply syndicalism to
14350-417: The French president's call for national unity by agreeing to a no-strike pledge and to resolve labor disputes through arbitration and by actively participating in the French war effort. Most of its members of military age were conscripted without resistance and its ranks shrank from 350,000 in 1913 to 49,000 dues-paying members in 1915. CGT leaders defended this course by arguing that France's war against Germany
14555-435: The German Free Trade Unions ' membership grew by 350% but its bureaucracy by more than 1900%. Another common explanation for the rise of syndicalism is that it was a result of the economic backwardness of the countries in which it emerged, particularly France. Newer studies have questioned this account. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, changes in labor processes contributed to the radicalization of workers and thereby to
14760-461: The German Empire identified not as Germans but in regional terms as Prussians or Bavarians and the like. Multilingual countries like Germany and Spain also could not claim a common language as a defining characteristic of the nation nor did members of the same nation share the same values or experiences, syndicalists in Spain and Germany argued. Syndicalists also argued against the notion that the war
14965-557: The Great Labour Unrest, including the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike where he chaired the strike committee. In Ireland, Larkin and the ITGWU led 20,000 during the 1913 Dublin lockout . After the ITGWU attempted to unionize the Dublin United Tramway Company and tram workers went on strike, the city's employers threatened to fire any workers who did not sign a pledge to not support the ITGWU, thereby turning
15170-446: The IWW maintained its anti-war stance, while its bitter rival, the AFL, supported the war; however, it did not launch an anti-war campaign, as it feared the government would crush it if it did, and wanted to focus on its economic struggles. The IWW's practical opposition to the war was limited, 95% of eligible IWW members registered for the draft, and most of those drafted served. Syndicalists in
15375-487: The IWW was syndicalist in the broader sense of the word. According to Melvyn Dubofsky and most other IWW historians, the IWW's industrial unionism was the specifically American form of syndicalism. Nevertheless, the IWW also had a presence in Canada and Mexico nearly from its inception, as the United States economy and labor force was intertwined with those countries. French syndicalism and American industrial unionism influenced
15580-502: The IWW, defined the union's purpose at the First Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World as "the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism". Syndicalists held that society was divided into two great classes, the working class and the bourgeoisie. Their interests being irreconcilable, they must be in a constant state of class struggle . Tom Mann , a British syndicalist, declared that "the object of
15785-706: The Industrial Workers of the World were formed in the United States by the Western Federation of Miners , the American Labor Union , and a broad coalition of socialists, anarchists, and labor unionists. Its base was mostly in the Western United States, where labor conflicts were most violent and workers therefore radicalized. Although the Wobblies insisted their union was a distinctly American form of labor organization and not an import of European syndicalism,
15990-756: The International Confederation of Labour (ICL–CIT), which was formed in 2018. The word syndicalism has French origins. In French, a syndicat is a trade union, usually a local union. A syndicate is a self organizing group working towards a shared interest. The corresponding words in Spanish and Portuguese, sindicato , and Italian, sindacato , are similar. By extension, the French syndicalisme refers to trade unionism in general. The concept of syndicalisme révolutionnaire or revolutionary syndicalism emerged in French socialist journals in 1903, and
16195-514: The Netherlands and Sweden, both neutral countries, criticized the truce socialists entered with their governments in order to shore up national defense. The Dutch NAS disowned Cornelissen, one of its founders, for his support for the war. Syndicalists from Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and Cuba met at an anti-war congress in El Ferrol , Spain, in April 1915. Although
16400-514: The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Discussions were contentious and did not lead to the founding of a syndicalist international. Delegates did agree on a declaration of principles describing syndicalism's core tenets. They also decided to launch an International Syndicalist Information Bureau and to hold another congress in Amsterdam. This congress did not take place due to
16605-425: The Netherlands, and in 1904 in Italy, in addition to significant work stoppages during the Russian Revolution of 1905 . Darlington cites the significance of the conscious intervention by syndicalist militants. The industrial unrest of the period created conditions which made workers receptive to syndicalist leaders' agitation. They spread their ideas through pamphlets and newspapers and had considerable influence in
16810-463: The New Zealand media published a claim by John Stenhouse, an associate professor at the University of Otago that the country's history was being distorted by "secular and left-liberal" historians, such as Olssen and Keith Sinclair to push their own agendas. Olssen called the claim "either unfair or disingenuous or both" but noted that he had often discussed whether New Zealand was a Christian country with
17015-410: The OBU advocated values of "radical manhood". Francis Shor argues that the "IWW promotion of sabotage represents a kind of masculine posturing which directly challenged the individualizing techniques of power mobilized by industrial capitalism". Thus, "the IWW's masculine identity incorporated features of working-class solidarity and protest ... through 'virile' syndicalism." For example, while defending
17220-451: The Polity data series—which evaluates the degree of democratic or autocratic authority in a state's governing institutions based on the openness of executive recruitment, constraints on executive authority, and political competition—is inadequate because it measures democratization, not revolution, and doesn't account for regimes which come to power by revolution but fail to change the structure of
17425-521: The Russian Revolution. Although they were still coming to grips with the evolving Bolshevik ideology and despite traditional anarchist suspicions of Marxism, they saw in Russia a revolution that had taken place against parliamentary politics and under the influence of workers' councils. At this point, they also had only limited knowledge of the reality in Russia. Augustin Souchy , a German anarcho-syndicalist, hailed it "the great passion that swept us all along. In
17630-560: The Shop Culture: The Labour Process in the New Zealand Railway Workshops 1890–1930 (1992). Written by Olssen and Jeremy Brecher , this article reflected their research into the building and engineering trades and challenged the idea that large-scale industry inevitably reduced skilled workers' agency, showing that those employed at Hillside Engineering enjoyed and maintained almost complete control over
17835-615: The Swedish SAC. There was a similar conflict between the Industrial Syndicalist Education League and the Industrial Workers of Great Britain . By 1914, there were syndicalist national labor confederations in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and France, while Belgian syndicalists were in the process of forming one. There were also groups advocating syndicalism in Russia, Japan,
18040-562: The United Kingdom, the period from 1910 to 1914 became known as the Great Labour Unrest . While many historians see syndicalism as a consequence of this unrest, Elie Halévy and the politician Lord Robert Cecil argue it was its cause. Employers in France likewise blamed an upsurge in workers' militancy in the same period on syndicalist leaders. Syndicalism was further encouraged by employers' hostility to workers' actions. The economist Ernesto Screpanti hypothesized that strike waves like
18245-478: The United States and Italy and was active in both the IWW and USI. International work processes also contributed to the diffusion of syndicalism. For example, sailors helped establish IWW presences in port cities around the world. Syndicalists formed different kinds of organizations. Some like the French radicals worked within existing unions to infuse them with their revolutionary spirit. Some found existing unions entirely unsuitable and built federations of their own,
18450-511: The United States, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, and Great Britain. Outside of North America, the IWW also had organizations in Australia, New Zealand, where it was part of the Federation of Labour (FOL), Great Britain even though its membership had imploded by 1913, and South Africa. In Ireland, syndicalism took the form of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU), which espoused
18655-814: The United States, the IWW was involved in at least 150 strikes including the Goldfield, Nevada, labor troubles of 1906–1907 by miners' strikes, the Pressed Steel Car strike of 1909 , the 1912 Lawrence textile strike , the Brotherhood of Timber Workers ' strikes in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1912–1913, and the 1913 Paterson silk strike . The most prominent was the struggle in Lawrence. Wobblie leaders brought together 23,000 mostly immigrant workers, many of whom did not speak English. They arranged for workers' children to be sent to live with sympathetic families outside of Lawrence for
18860-438: The achievement of immediate improvements, such as the reduction of working hours, the increase of wages, etc. But this task is only one aspect of the work of syndicalism; it prepares for complete emancipation, which can be realised only by expropriating the capitalist class." For unions to fulfill this role, it was necessary to prevent bureaucrats – "whose sole purpose in life seems to be apologising for and defending
19065-643: The anarcho-syndicalist theorist Rudolf Rocker , there were syndicalist tendencies in Britain's labor movement as early as the 1830s. Syndicalism's direct roots were in Pierre Joseph Proudhon 's mutualism , a form of socialism that focused on cooperation among the community of man. He coined capitalist to describe the political class granting itself monopolies on the use of capital, and wanted workers to oppose this state control through peaceful means, only using force defensively. Proudhon's ideas were popular in
19270-479: The associate professor and there was some agreement that Christianity had influenced in shaping the values of New Zealand. In an earlier piece Stenhouse had critiqued New Zealand historiography and religion and developed a "secularization thesis", citing as an example Olssen's position that Edward Gibbon Wakefield's social experiment in New Zealand "left little room for religion". In the same article, Stenhouse contended that Olssen's work with Andrée Lévesque in 1978 on
19475-655: The attacks on the IWW; by the end of 1919, the IWW was practically powerless. 1919 also saw the Canadian labour revolt , leading to the formation of One Big Union, which was only partly industrial unionist. The Bolsheviks suppressed syndicalism in Russia but courted syndicalists abroad as part of their international strategy. In March 1919, the 1st Congress of the Comintern was held in Moscow. The Bolsheviks acknowledged syndicalism's opposition to socialist reformism and saw them as part of
19680-645: The book answered the question in its title. Movement and Persistence: A Case Study of Southern Dunedin in Global Context (2011). This was a paper submitted by Olssen to Building Attachment in Families (2011) , a funded project managed by the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment (CRESA), with the goal of identifying how communities are built and sustained to create family wellbeing and manage problems of transience. Olssen used data confirming that within
19885-451: The broader sense, originated with the IWW in the United States and then caught on in other countries. In a number of countries, certain syndicalist practices and ideas predate the coining of the term in France or the founding of the IWW. In Bert Altena's view, a number of movements in Europe can be called syndicalist, even before 1900. According to the English social historian E. P. Thompson and
20090-438: The capitalist system of exploitation", according to Larkin – from inhibiting workers' militant zeal. Battling bureaucracy and reformism within the labor movement was a major theme for syndicalists. One expression of this was many syndicalists' rejection of collective bargaining agreements , which were thought to force labor peace upon workers and break their solidarity. The Wobblie Vincent St. John declared: "There
20295-624: The case in Italy and much of the Anglophone world, including Ireland where anarchists had no significant influence on syndicalism. The extent to which syndicalist doctrine was a product of anarchism is debated. The anarchist Iain McKay argues that syndicalism is but a new name for ideas and tactics developed by Bakunin and the anarchist wing of the First International, while it is wholly inconsistent with positions Marx and Engels took. According to him,
20500-494: The causes and implications of revolution. The initial fourth-generation books and journal articles generally relied on the Polity data series on democratization . Such analyses, like those by A. J. Enterline, Zeev Maoz , and Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, identified a revolution by a significant change in the country's score on Polity's autocracy-to-democracy scale. Since the 2010s, scholars like Jeff Colgan have argued that
20705-525: The congress was poorly planned and prohibited by the Spanish authorities, delegates managed to discuss resistance to the war and extending international cooperation between syndicalist groups. Argentine, Brazilian, Spanish, and Portuguese delegates later met in October in Rio de Janeiro to continue discussions and resolved to deepen cooperation between South American syndicalists. While syndicalists were only able to put up
20910-497: The country. After the police occupied the offices of an agricultural union, syndicalists called for a general strike. During the strike, Lisbon was controlled by workers and there were armed uprisings in several other cities. In 1912, the strike wave ebbed off. Italian syndicalists successfully organized agricultural workers in the Po Valley by uniting different parts of agricultural working class. They were most successful in areas where
21115-530: The course of events in Russia. In France, the CGT's radical minority that had opposed the war enthusiastically supported Bolshevism. They formed the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees and attempted to push the CGT as a whole to support the Comintern. The General Executive Board of the IWW decided join the Comintern, although this decision was never confirmed by a convention. German and Swedish syndicalists were more critical of Bolshevism from
21320-399: The decisions young women made around work and marriage, which Olssen said, were influenced by higher levels of education and more awareness of debates and movements in the wider world related to women's rights. Class and Occupation: The New Zealand Reality (2005). A reviewer said while the book was well-researched and very detailed, it was more likely to be of interest to specialists in
21525-427: The demise of their military juntas . Early scholars often debated the distinction between revolution and civil war. They also questioned whether a revolution is purely political (i.e., concerned with the restructuring of government) or whether "it is an extensive and inclusive social change affecting all the various aspects of the life of a society, including the economic, religious, industrial, and familial as well as
21730-478: The desired form of government. Other types of revolution, created for other typologies, include proletarian or communist revolutions (inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aim to replace capitalism with communism ); failed or abortive revolutions (that are not able to secure power after winning temporary victories or amassing large-scale mobilizations); or violent vs. nonviolent revolutions . The term revolution has also been used to denote great changes outside
21935-527: The development of the European family in New Zealand, reflected "second wave feminist antipathy toward patriarchy" when they portrayed the churches and clergy in Otago as providing justification for the patriarchal values in the family, community and wider New Zealand society. In his study of Otago , Olssen explored the history of the province from the relationships between Māori and colonists from Britain that, in
22140-629: The dispute into a city-wide conflict in late September. Workers' resistance crumbled in January 1914. There was no international syndicalist organization prior to World War I. In 1907, CGT activists presented the Charter of Amiens and syndicalism to an international audience a higher form of anarchism at the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam in 1907. Discussions at the Congress led to
22345-566: The dominance of the third generation's theories. The old theories were also dealt a significant blow by a series of revolutionary events that they could not readily explain. The Iranian and Nicaraguan Revolutions of 1979, the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines , and the 1989 Autumn of Nations in Europe, Asia and Africa saw diverse opposition movements topple seemingly powerful regimes amidst popular demonstrations and mass strikes in nonviolent revolutions . For some historians,
22550-508: The dominant strategies in the labor movement, which was led by reformist trade unions and socialist parties. Vladimir Lenin posited that "revolutionary syndicalism in many countries was a direct and inevitable result of opportunism, reformism and parliamentary cretinism." A feeling that ideological disputes were draining workers' power led Dutch, French, and American syndicalist organizations to declare themselves independent of any political groups. In countries like Italy, Spain, and Ireland, which
22755-564: The duration of the strike so their parents could focus on the struggle. Unlike most IWW-led strikes, the struggle was successful. In Mexico, syndicalism first emerged in 1906 during the violent Cananea strike by miners and the even more violent Río Blanco strike by textile workers. In 1912, during the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920, anarchists formed the syndicalist union House of the World Worker ( Casa del Obrero Mundial ). It led
22960-556: The early nineteenth century until 1940, specifically examining how "politics, society, ideas, culture, and economics [affected] the lives of individuals and their societies". This focus on social history that explored class and social relationships, was said by historian Jock Phillips to be an area pioneered by Olssen. According to Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney from the University of Otago, Olssen's work significantly shaped understandings of "New Zealand's political traditions, intellectual culture and social formations". Towards
23165-420: The early nineteenth century, resulted in a culturally-respectful regional settlement with a provincial identity, through its development as a centre in which skilled and unskilled workers became active in advocating for improved working conditions and consolidated the unionised working class as a potential political influence. One reviewer said this interpretation of the development of a working class by Olssen
23370-668: The economy, and syndicalization of industry. The Russian Civil War against the White Army split anarchists. The syndicalists were criticized harshly because most supported the Bolshevik regime in the war even as they excoriated Bolshevik policy. They reasoned that a White victory would be worse and that the Whites had to be defeated before a third revolution could topple the Bolsheviks. Despite this, syndicalists were harassed and repeatedly arrested by
23575-401: The entire class, and could therefore not be divided on political grounds. The French syndicalist Pouget explained: "The CGT embraces – outside of all the schools of politics – all workers cognisant of the struggle to be waged for the elimination of wage-slavery and the employer class." In practice, this neutrality was more ambiguous. For example, the CGT worked with
23780-685: The established union confederations before breaking away and forming USI and the CNT respectively. In Norway, there were both the Norwegian Trade Union Opposition ( Norske Fagopposition , NFO), syndicalists working within the mainstream Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions ( Landsorganisasjonen i Norge in Norwegian, LO), and the Norwegian Syndicalist Federation ( Norsk Syndikalistik Federation in Norwegian, NSF), an independent syndicalist organization set up by
23985-445: The events. The Haymarket Affair , as these events became known, led anarchists and labor organizers, including syndicalists, in both the United States and Europe to re-evaluate the revolutionary meaning of the general strike. According to Émile Pouget , a French anarchist and CGT leader, from "the United States, the idea of the general strike – fertilized by the blood of anarchists hanged in Chicago ... –
24190-451: The fact that many Marxists embraced syndicalism merely indicates that they abandoned Marx's views and converted to Bakunin's. Altena too views syndicalism as part of the broader anarchist movement but concedes there was a tension between this and the fact that it was also a labor movement. He also sees Marxist ideas reflected in the movement, as leading syndicalists, such as Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis and Christiaan Cornelissen , and much of
24395-646: The factories and order to the economy in December by putting the economy under state control. At the First All Russian Congress of Trade Unions in January, the syndicalists, who had paid little attention to the unions, only had 6 delegates, while the Bolsheviks had 273. No longer depending on their help in toppling the provisional government, the Bolsheviks were now in a position to ignore the syndicalists' opposition and outvoted them at this congress. They opted to disempower local committees by subordinating them to
24600-570: The factory committees as the true form of syndicalist organization, not unions. Because they were better organized, the Bolsheviks were able to gain more traction in the committees, with six times as many delegates in a typical factory. Despite the goals they had in common, syndicalists became anxious about the Bolsheviks' growing influence, especially after they won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets in September. The Petrograd Soviet established
24805-651: The field of "demographics and census data...[than]...the general reader". An Accidental Utopia? Social Mobility and the Foundations of an Egalitarian Society, 1880–1940 (2010). Olssen co-authored this as the fourth book published by the Caversham Project. Writing in the Otago Daily Times Geoffrey Vine, a journalist and Presbyterian minister, noted Olssen's radicalism and "socialist aspirations" and suggested it remained open to debate whether or not
25010-404: The first category. They utilized theories of cognitive psychology and frustration-aggression theory to link the cause of revolution to the state of mind of the masses. While these theorists varied in their approach as to what exactly incited the people to revolt (e.g., modernization, recession, or discrimination), they agreed that the primary cause for revolution was a widespread frustration with
25215-567: The formation of the first women's union and the general acceptance by middle-class people for unions, resulted in workers actively supporting the development of an independent Labour Party. Olssen was on the Steering Panel for Our Futures Te Pae Tāwhiti The 2013 census and New Zealand's changing population (2014) a paper published by the Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand . Following
25420-655: The formation of the international syndicalist journal Bulletin international du mouvement syndicaliste . The CGT was affiliated with the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers (ISNTUC), which brought together reformist socialist unions. Both the Dutch NAS and the British ISEL attempted to remedy the lack of a syndicalist counterpart to ISNTUC in 1913, simultaneously publishing calls for an international syndicalist congress in 1913. The CGT rejected
25625-628: The former could not be overthrown by changes to the latter. Nevertheless, a number of leading syndicalist figures worked in political parties and some ran for elected office. Larkin was active in the Labour Party , while Haywood was part of the Socialist Party of America . Both of them saw the economic sphere as the primary arena for revolutionary struggle, and involvement in politics could at best be an echo of industrial struggle. They were skeptical of parliamentary politics. According to Thomas Hagerty ,
25830-520: The invitation. Its leaders feared that leaving ISNTUC, which it intended to revolutionize from within, would split the CGT and harm working-class unity. The IWW also did not participate, as it considered itself an international in its own right. The First International Syndicalist Congress was held in London from 27 September to 2 October. It was attended by 38 delegates from 65 organizations in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Italy,
26035-483: The labour process, [and] "their skill...gave them a sense of identity and pride". Building the New World: work, politics and society in Caversham, 1880s–1920s (1995). This publication was authored by Olssen following the project receiving considerable funding from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. One reviewer saw it as representing a change in focus for Olssen from unskilled to skilled workers at
26240-417: The late 14th century. The word was limited then to mean the revolving motion of celestial bodies. "Revolution" in the sense of abrupt change in a social order was first recorded in the mid-15th century. By 1688, the political meaning of the word was familiar enough that the replacement of James II with William III was termed the " Glorious Revolution ". "Revolution" is now employed most often to denote
26445-495: The libertarian feminist organization Mujeres Libres during the Spanish Civil War. According to the historian Sharif Gemie, the male orientation of parts of the syndicalist labor movement reflected the ideas of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , who defended patriarchy because women, of their own accord, are "chained to nature". Syndicalists were involved in a number of strikes, labor disputes, and other struggles. In
26650-406: The likelihood of international disputes. Revolutions have been further examined from an anthropological perspective. Drawing on Victor Turner's writings on ritual and performance, Bjorn Thomassen suggested that revolutions can be understood as "liminal" moments: modern political revolutions very much resemble rituals and can therefore be studied within a process approach. This would imply not only
26855-535: The lines of the IWW with some support from the American organization but also with links to the left wing of the Communist Party of Germany . In December 1919, the Free Workers' Union of Germany (Syndicalists) ( Freie Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands (Syndikalisten) , FAUD) was formed, claiming to represent over 110,000 workers, more than eighteen times the FVdG's pre-war membership. Most of the new organization came from
27060-555: The most consistently revolutionary faction on the left as socialists sought to rein in workers and prevent unrest. The Italian syndicalist movement had split during the war, as the syndicalist supporters of Italian intervention left USI. The interventionists, led by Alceste de Ambris and Edmondo Rossoni, formed the Italian Union of Labor [ it ] ( Unione Italiana del Lavoro , UIL) in 1918. The UIL's national syndicalism emphasized workers' love of labor, self-sacrifice, and
27265-557: The nation rather than anti-capitalist class struggle. Both USI and the UIL grew significantly during the biennio rosso . The first factory occupation of the biennio was carried out by the UIL at a steel plant in Dalmine in February 1919, before the military put an end to it. In July, a strike movement spread through Italy, culminating in a general strike on 20 July. While USI supported it and
27470-441: The one from 1911 to 1922 generally occur during the upper turning-points of the periodic global long cycles of boom and bust known as Kondratieff waves . He argued that such waves of proletarian insurgency were global in reach, saw workers breaking free of the dynamics of the capitalist system, and aimed to overthrow that system. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, workers' radicalization manifested itself in their rejection of
27675-453: The opposite. Socialists agreed to put aside class conflict and vote for war credits . German socialists argued that war was necessary to defend against what they termed Russia's "barbaric Tsarism ", while their French counterparts pointed to the need to defend against Prussian militarism and the German "instinct of domination and of discipline". This collaboration between the socialist movement and
27880-520: The outbreak of World War I. Syndicalists had long opposed interventionism. Haywood held that "it is better to be a traitor to your country than to your class". French syndicalists viewed the French Army as the primary defender of the capitalist order. In 1901, the CGT published a manual for soldiers encouraging desertion. In 1911, British syndicalists distributed an "Open Letter to British Soldiers" imploring them not to shoot on striking workers but to join
28085-445: The periphery of a country; others started with urban insurrection aimed at seizing the country's capital city. Revolutions can be inspired by the rising popularity of certain political ideologies , moral principles, or models of governance such as nationalism , republicanism , egalitarianism , self-determination , human rights , democracy , liberalism , fascism , or socialism . A regime may become vulnerable to revolution due to
28290-509: The phenomena of revolutions were usually related to social psychology , such as Le Bon's crowd psychology theory. The second generation sought to develop detailed frameworks, grounded in social behavior theory, to explain why and when revolutions arise. Their work can be divided into three categories: psychological, sociological and political. The writings of Ted Robert Gurr , Ivo K. Feierbrand, Rosalind L. Feierbrand, James A. Geschwender, David C. Schwartz , and Denton E. Morrison fall into
28495-405: The point of production where they work" rather than at the ballot box. Of the 230 delegates present at the founding of Canada's One Big Union, a mere 3 were women. When a female radical criticized the masculinist atmosphere at the meeting, she was rebuffed by men who insisted that labor only concern itself with class rather than gender issues. The historian Todd McCallum concludes that syndicalists in
28700-579: The police, particularly the Cheka , from 1919 on. Their demands had some sway with workers and dissidents within the Bolshevik party and the Bolshevik leadership viewed them as the most dangerous part of the libertarian movement. After the Russian Civil War ended, workers and sailors, including both anarchists and Bolsheviks, rose up in what came to be known as the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921, with Kronstadt being
28905-465: The political regime that draw on a competing vision (or visions) of a just order, (b) a notable degree of informal or formal mass mobilization , and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions such as mass demonstrations , protests, strikes, or violence." Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and varied in their methods, durations and outcomes. Some revolutions started with peasant uprisings or guerrilla warfare on
29110-541: The political sphere. Such revolutions, often labeled social revolutions , are recognized as major transformations in a society's culture, philosophy, or technology, rather than in its political system . Some social revolutions are global in scope, while others are limited to single countries. Commonly cited examples of social revolution are the Industrial Revolution , Scientific Revolution , Commercial Revolution , and Digital Revolution . These revolutions also fit
29315-503: The political". There are numerous typologies of revolution in the social science literature. Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated between: One of the Marxist typologies divides revolutions into: Charles Tilly , a modern scholar of revolutions, differentiated between: Mark Katz identified six forms of revolution: These categories are not mutually exclusive; the Russian Revolution of 1917 began with an urban revolution to depose
29520-427: The position that the mobilisation of the workforce in the 1880s had many egalitarian aspects including the formation of some of the first women's unions, and women became increasingly confident and independent. Patricia Grimshaw of the University of Melbourne said the editors of the book had placed gender at the centre of an analysis of work in Caversham, and Olssen's contribution was a meta narrative that stressed
29725-483: The process by which the women of the Caversham community were enabled to gain skilled training and more independence in their lives. Sites of Gender: Women, Men & Modernity in Southern Dunedin, 1890–1939 (2003). Olssen assembling a larger multidisciplinary team in the late 1990s to analyse women's experience and the role of gender in structuring society, resulting in the publication of this book. Olssen took
29930-468: The proclamation of a new government, fearing a dictatorship of the proletariat , even more so after the Bolsheviks created the central Soviet of People's Commissars composed only of members of their party. They called for decentralization of power but agreed with Lenin's labor program, which endorsed workers' control in all enterprises of a certain minimum size. The introduction of workers' control led to economic chaos. Lenin turned to restoring discipline in
30135-464: The psychological school, they differed in their definitions of what causes disequilibrium, but agreed that it is a state of severe disequilibrium that is responsible for revolutions. The third group, including writers such as Charles Tilly , Samuel P. Huntington , Peter Ammann , and Arthur L. Stinchcombe , followed a political science path and looked at pluralist theory and interest group conflict theory . Those theories view events as outcomes of
30340-571: The rank-and-file and instill in workers the expectation that the union rather than they would wage the class struggle. Syndicalists advocated direct action , including working to rule , passive resistance, sabotage, and strikes, particularly the general strike, as tactics in the class struggle, as opposed to indirect action such as electoral politics. The IWW engaged in around 30 mostly successful civil disobedience campaigns they deemed free speech fights . Wobblies would defy laws restricting public speeches, in order to clog up prisons and court systems as
30545-647: The reformist union Federterra had been thwarted by employers. Syndicalists led large strikes by farm workers in Parma and Ferrara in 1907–1908; these strikes failed as a result of employers' strikebreaking tactics and infighting among workers. In 1911–1913, syndicalists played an important role in a large strike wave in Italy's industrial centers. The syndicalist union confederation USI was formed in 1912 by veterans of both strike movements. British Wobblies were involved in two major strikes in Scotland, one at Argyll Motor Works and
30750-468: The related geographic mobility in the borough . Olssen had studied similar topics while undertaking his PhD at Duke University. Jock Phillips noted in Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand that Olssen's work in Caversham was significant during a time when historians were studying social history in the country. In 2002 an exhibition resulting from a collaboration between the staff of
30955-549: The release of the paper, Olssen said in the Otago Daily Times that the data from the 2013 Census showed an imbalance in the country with Auckland growing at a much faster rate than some other regions, particularly those in rural areas. He concluded that not only was this contributing toward feelings of resentment, but also meant that ratepayers in areas with less growth could struggle to financially maintain infrastructure, including that required to ensure satisfactory levels of service "for an ageing and possibly dwindling population". In
31160-502: The revolutionary wing of the labor movement. No syndicalists attended the founding convention, mainly because the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War , which included a blockade of Russia by the Allied powers of World War I , made travel to Moscow near impossible. After long discussions, the CNT opted to join the Comintern , although it classified its adherence as provisional as a concession to detractors of Bolshevism. USI also decided to join; some like Borghi had reservations about
31365-458: The rise of a third generation of theories, put forth by writers such as Theda Skocpol , Barrington Moore , Jeffrey Paige, and others expanding on the old Marxist class-conflict approach. They turned their attention to "rural agrarian-state conflicts, state conflicts with autonomous elites, and the impact of interstate economic and military competition on domestic political change." In particular, Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions (1979)
31570-452: The rise of syndicalism elsewhere. Syndicalist movements and organizations in a number of countries were established by activists who had spent time in France. Ervin Szabó visited Paris in 1904 and then established a Syndicalist Propaganda Group in his native Hungary in 1910. Several of the founders of the Spanish CNT had visited France. Alceste de Ambris and Armando Borghi [ it ] , both leaders in Italy's USI, were in Paris for
31775-588: The rise of syndicalism. This rise took place during the Second Industrial Revolution . Two groups of workers were most attracted to syndicalism: casual or seasonal laborers who frequently changed jobs, and workers whose occupations were becoming obsolete as a result of technological advances. The first group included landless agricultural workers, construction workers, and dockers, all of whom were disproportionately represented in several countries' syndicalist movements. Because they frequently changed jobs, such workers did not have close relationships with their employers and
31980-630: The risk of losing one's job as a result of a strike was reduced. Moreover, because of the time constraints of their jobs they were forced to act immediately in order to achieve anything and could not plan for the long term by building up strike funds or powerful labor organizations or by engaging in mediation. Their working conditions gave them an inclination to engage in direct confrontation with employers and apply direct action. The second group included miners, railway employees, and certain factory workers. Their occupations were deskilled by technological and organizational changes. These changes made workers from
32185-468: The rule of workers' organizations. In such a society, individuals would be liberated in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives. Syndicalist policies on gender issues were mixed. The CNT did not admit women as members until 1918. The CGT dismissed feminism as a bourgeois movement. Syndicalists were mostly indifferent to the question of women's suffrage . Elizabeth Gurley Flynn , an IWW organizer, insisted that women "find their power at
32390-436: The second at a Singer Corporation 's sewing machine factory in Clydebank . In 1906, several industrial unionists began to spread their ideas and organize workers at Singer's. The organized the 1911 strike at Singer after a woman was fired for not working hard enough. The strike was cleverly defeated by management and most activists lost their jobs. The ISEL leader Tom Mann was also at the center of several labor disputes during
32595-411: The second generation came under criticism for being too limited in geographical scope, and for lacking a means of empirical verification. Also, while second-generation theories may have been capable of explaining a specific revolution, they could not adequately explain why revolutions failed to occur in other societies experiencing very similar circumstances. The criticism of the second generation led to
32800-553: The second group similar in some respects to the first group. They did not entirely result from the introduction of new technology but were also caused by changes in management methods. This included increased supervision of workers, piecework , internal promotions, all designed make workers docile and loyal and to transfer knowledge and control over the process of production from workers to employers. Frustration with this loss of power led to formal and informal resistance by workers. Altena disagrees with this explanation. According to him, it
33005-412: The socialists' neutrality and therefore support the war. Finally, they gave similar arguments as the French, warning of the dangers posed by the "suffocating imperialism of Germany", and felt obliged to follow the CGT's lead. USI's pro-war wing had the support of less than a third of the organization's members and it was forced out in September 1914. Its anarchist wing, led by Borghi, was firmly opposed to
33210-408: The socio-political situation. The second group, composed of academics such as Chalmers Johnson , Neil Smelser , Bob Jessop , Mark Hart , Edward A. Tiryakian, and Mark Hagopian, drew on the work of Talcott Parsons and the structural-functionalist theory in sociology. They saw society as a system in equilibrium between various resources, demands, and subsystems (political, cultural, etc.). As in
33415-399: The soviets, they were most enthusiastic about the factory committees and workers' councils that had emerged in all industrial centers in the course of strikes and demonstrations in the February Revolution . The committees fought for higher wages and shorter hours but above all for workers' control over production, which both the syndicalists and Bolsheviks supported. The syndicalists viewed
33620-409: The spring of 1917. The start of the war had induced an economic boom in the United States, tightening the labor market and thereby strengthening workers' bargaining position. The IWW profited from this, more than doubling its membership between 1916 and 1917. At the same time, the Wobblies fervently denounced the war and mulled calling an anti-war general strike. Once the United States became a combatant,
33825-456: The start. Rocker declared already in August 1918 that the Bolshevik regime was "but a new system of tyranny". Revolutionary current In political science , a revolution ( Latin : revolutio , 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone , all revolutions contain "a common set of elements at their core: (a) efforts to change
34030-462: The state and society sufficiently to yield a notable difference in the Polity score. Instead, Colgan offered a new data set to single out governments that "transform the existing social, political, and economic relationships of the state by overthrowing or rejecting the principal existing institutions of society." This data set has been employed to make empirically based contributions to the literature on revolution by finding links between revolution and
34235-473: The state was known as the union sacrée in France, the Burgfrieden in Germany, and godsvrede [ nl ] in the Netherlands. Moreover, a number of anarchists led by Peter Kropotkin , including the influential syndicalist Christiaan Cornelissen, issued the Manifesto of the Sixteen , supporting the Allied cause in the war. Despite this, most syndicalists remained true to their internationalist and anti-militarist principles by opposing
34440-406: The state, central syndicalist themes. According to Lucien van der Walt , the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA , which was formed in 1870, was in fact syndicalist. Kenyon Zimmer sees a "proto-syndicalism" in the influence the anarchist -led International Working People's Association (IWPA) and Central Labor Union , which originated in the American section of the First International, had in
34645-411: The strong statements made by Olssen about perceptions of women at the time added value to the study, with the suggestion that at the very least the evidence needed to be reconsidered to ascertain if exclusions could "point to inclusions and alternative meanings". Len Richardson, a labour and sports historian at the University of Canterbury , suggested that Olssen's study was significant because it traced
34850-455: The struggle for state power". Jack Goldstone defines a revolution thusly: "[Revolution is] an effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine authorities. This definition is broad enough to encompass events ranging from the relatively peaceful revolutions that toppled communist regimes to
35055-450: The suburb there were high levels of fluidity and social mixing of the population. Working Lives c.1900 A Photographic Essay was launched in August 2014 by Dave Cull a former mayor of Dunedin. One reviewer said that while Olssen invited the reader "to engage with both the richness and limitations of the photographers' gaze", a lack of images related to "household work or child-raising; work-place injuries and ill-health", portrayed
35260-425: The syndicalist conception, unions played a dual role. They were organs of struggle within capitalism for better working conditions, and they were also to play a key role in the revolution to overthrow capitalism. Victor Griffuelhes expressed this at the CGT's 1906 congress in the following manner: "In its day-to-day demands, syndicalism seeks the co-ordination of workers' efforts, the increase of workers' well-being by
35465-402: The syndicalists' ability to theorize their struggles and their experience with direct action methods. Starting in the second half of 1919, workers disappointed by the socialist party's and unions' support for the war and previously non-unionized unskilled workers who were radicalized during the war flocked to the FVdG. The revolution also saw the introduction to Germany of industrial unionism along
35670-471: The tactic of sabotage and the CGT's La Vie Ouvrière carried articles about Britain's labor movement by the British syndicalist Tom Mann . Migration played a key role in spreading syndicalist ideas. The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation ( Federación Obrera Regional Argentina , FORA), openly anarchist by 1905, was formed by Italian and Spanish immigrants in 1901. Many IWW leaders were European immigrants, including Edmondo Rossoni who moved between
35875-406: The time, and at Cornell in 1967 Olssen studied the new social history through the lens of "economics, statistics, game theory, [and] sociology", and has credited this time as being influential in his development as a social historian able to write the history of ordinary people. On his return to New Zealand, much of Olssen's research explored the development of social structures in the country from
36080-459: The trade unions, which in turn became organs of the state. The Bolsheviks argued that workers' control did not mean that workers controlled factories at the local level and that this control had to be centralized and put under a broader economic plan. The syndicalists criticized the Bolshevik regime bitterly, characterizing it as state capitalist . They denounced state control over the factories and agitated for decentralization of power in politics and
36285-617: The traditional paradigm of revolutions as class struggle -driven conflicts centered in Europe, and involving a violent state versus its discontented people, was no longer sufficient to account for the multi-class coalitions toppling dictators around the world. Consequently, the study of revolutions began to evolve in three directions. As Goldstone describes it, scholars of revolution: The fourth generation increasingly turned to quantitative techniques when formulating its theories. Political science research moved beyond individual or comparative case studies towards large-N statistical analysis assessing
36490-445: The union's philosophy of direct action. Altena argues that, even though evidence of ordinary workers' convictions is scant, it indicates that they were aware of doctrinal differences between various currents in the labor movement and able to defend their own views. He observes that they likely understood syndicalist newspapers and debated political issues. Syndicalism is used by some interchangeably with anarcho-syndicalism . This term
36695-434: The unions is to wage the Class War". According to syndicalist doctrine, this war was aimed not just at gaining concessions such as higher wages or a shorter working day but at the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Syndicalists agreed with Karl Marx 's characterization of the state as the "executive committee of the ruling class". They held that a society's economic order determined its political order and concluded that
36900-466: The very workers dying in the war were denied access to that culture by capitalist conditions. Finally, syndicalists railed against religious justifications for war. Before the war, they had rejected religion as divisive at best; support for the war by both Catholic and Protestant clergy revealed their hypocrisy and disgraced the principles they and Christianity claimed to uphold. As the war progressed, disaffection with worsening living conditions at home and
37105-410: The war and their respective nation's participation in it. The majority of the French CGT and a sizable minority in the Italian USI did not. The CGT had long had a moderate, reformist wing, which gained the upper hand. As a result, according to historians like Darlington or van der Linden and Thorpe, the CGT was no longer a revolutionary syndicalist organization after the start of World War I. It followed
37310-413: The war and was almost completely suppressed by the state during the war, regrouped at a conference in Berlin in December 1918. It was active in the revolutionary events of the following years, particularly in the Ruhr area . It supported spontaneous strikes and championed direct action and sabotage. The FVdG started to be held in high regard for its radicalism by workers, particularly miners, who appreciated
37515-418: The war effort but also refrained from working against it. From the start of the war, even before Italy did so, a minority within USI, led by the most famous Italian syndicalist, Alceste De Ambris , called on the Italian state to take the Allies' side. As part of left-interventionism , the pro-war syndicalists saw Italian participation in the war as the completion of nationhood. They also felt compelled to oppose
37720-432: The war effort. Thanks in part to their fidelity to internationalism, syndicalist organizations profited from this development and expanded as the war drew to an end. Disaffection with the war condensed in the post-World War I revolutions that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917. In February 1917, strikes, riots, and troop mutinies broke out in Petrograd , forcing the Nicholas II to abdicate on 2 March in favor of
37925-437: The war, deeming it incompatible with workers' internationalism and predicting that it would only serve elites and governments. Its opposition was met with government repression, and Borghi and others were interned by the end of the war. Instead, the anti-war faction in the CGT was a small minority. It was led by the likes of Pierre Monatte and Alphonse Merrheim . They would link up with anti-war socialists from around Europe at
38130-548: The war. In 1917, radicals began to dominate the labor movement as a result of the war, the Sidónio Pais dictatorship established that year, and the influence of the Russian Revolution. The 1918 Portugal general strike was called for November but failed, and in 1919 the syndicalist General Confederation of Labour ( Confederação Geral do Trabalho , CGT) was formed as the country's first national union confederation. In Brazil, in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, syndicalists, along with anarchists and socialists, were leaders in
38335-405: The work of Dr Fredrick Truby King and the establishment of the Plunket Society . From 1975 until 1901, Olssen was Principal Investigator of this project, with the Caversham Borough chosen as the study area because of the availability of electoral rolls and population data from the Census. A key purpose of the project was to measure the social movement of different categories of people and
38540-574: The working class's struggle against capital. Syndicalists argued that patriotism was a means of integrating workers into capitalist society by distracting them from their true class interest. In 1908, the CGT's congress invoked the slogan of the First International, proclaiming that the "workers have no fatherland". When World War I broke out in July 1914, socialist parties and trade unions – both in neutral and belligerent countries – supported their respective nations' war efforts or national defense, despite previous pledges to do
38745-407: Was a clash of different cultures or that it could be justified as a defense of civilization. They stated that various cultures were not mutually hostile, and the state should not be seen as the embodiment of culture, since culture was the product of the entire population, while the state acted in the interests of just a few. Moreover, they argued that if culture was to be understood as high culture ,
38950-413: Was a landmark book of the third generation. Skocpol defined revolution as "rapid, basic transformations of society's state and class structures ... accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below", and she attributed revolutions to "a conjunction of multiple conflicts involving state, elites and the lower classes". In the late 1980s, a new body of academic work started questioning
39155-411: Was a war between democracy and republicanism on the one side and barbaric militarism on the other. Italy did not initially participate in World War I, which was deeply unpopular in the country, when it broke out. The Italian Socialist Party and the reformist Italian General Confederation of Labour opposed intervention in the Great War . Once Italy became a participant, the socialists refused to support
39360-421: Was awarded his PhD in 1970. While at Duke he also took several papers in sociology and spent a period in 1967 at a summer school at Cornell , funded by the Mathematical Association of America to study the relevance of mathematics and statistics to various historical issues. At Duke, he met and married the socialist feminist historian Andrée Lévesque , with whom he returned to New Zealand. In 1969, Olssen
39565-509: Was by Marxism . Émile Pouget , a CGT leader, maintained: "What sets syndicalism apart from the various schools of socialism – and makes it superior – is its doctrinal sobriety. Inside the unions, there is little philosophising. They do better than that: they act!" Similarly, Andreu Nin of the Spanish CNT proclaimed in 1919: "I am a fanatic of action, of revolution. I believe in actions more than in remote ideologies and abstract questions." Although workers' education
39770-408: Was convinced by the workers' enthusiasm that revolution could be possible, the UIL and the socialists were opposed. The socialists succeeded in curtailing the general strike and it imploded with a day. The government, unsettled by the radicalism on display, reacted with repression against the far left and concessions to workers and peasants. In Portugal, working class unrest picked up from the start of
39975-400: Was first used in 1907 by socialists criticizing the political neutrality of the CGT, although it was rarely used until the early 1920s when communists used it disparagingly. Only from 1922 was it used by self-avowed anarcho-syndicalists. Although syndicalism has traditionally been seen as a current within anarchism, it was dominated in some countries by Marxists rather than anarchists. This was
40180-406: Was formed in 1922, is an international syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries. At its peak, it represented millions of workers and competed directly for the hearts and minds of the working class with social democratic unions and parties. A number of syndicalist organizations were and still are to this day linked in the IWA–AIT; some of its member organizations left for
40385-463: Was important at least to committed activists, syndicalists distrusted bourgeois intellectuals, wanting to maintain workers' control over the movement. Syndicalist thinking was elaborated in pamphlets, leaflets, speeches, and articles and in the movement's own newspapers. These writings consisted mainly in calls to action and discussions of tactics in class struggle. The philosopher Georges Sorel 's Reflections on Violence introduced syndicalist ideas to
40590-411: Was imported to France". In the 1890s, French anarchists, conceding that individual action such as assassinations had failed, turned their focus to the labor movement. They were able to gain influence, particularly in the bourses du travail , which served as labor exchanges , meeting places for unions, and trades councils and organized in a national federation in 1893. In 1895, the CGT was formed as
40795-415: Was partly accidental, and leaders were unable to convert workers to syndicalist ideas. Frederick Ridley, a political scientist, is more equivocal. According to him, leaders were very influential in the drafting of syndicalist ideas. Syndicalism was more than a mere tool of a few leaders, and was a genuine product of the French labor movement. Darlington adds that most members in the Irish ITGWU were won over by
41000-401: Was quickly quelled by the British army and Connolly was executed. In Germany, the small Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG) opposed the socialists' Burgfrieden and Germany's involvement in the war, challenging the claim that the country was waging a defensive war. Its journals were suppressed and a number of its members were arrested. The United States did not enter the war until
41205-477: Was recruited to the University of Otago as a lecturer by the head of history, Angus Ross . He was promoted to associate professor in 1978, and to a personal chair in 1984. He was head of the Department of History from 1989 to 1993 and 2000 to 2002. On his retirement in 2002 he was appointed emeritus professor. Olssen's father was a historian and a socialist, who instilled in him a respect for evidence-based scholarship. He became interested in labour politics in
41410-420: Was significant because it situated him in later writings as a historian with the position that class was important in the political development of New Zealand. The history also explored the influence of the rise of Darwinian biology that challenged the biblical view of creation and developed intellectual credibility at the University of Otago where agnosticism and scientific methodology were valued resulting in
41615-422: Was still under British rule, parliamentary politics were not seen as a serious means for workers to express their grievances. Most workers were disenfranchised, yet even in France or Britain, where most male workers had the right to vote, many workers did not trust party politics. The enormous numerical growth of well-organized socialist parties, such as in Germany and Italy, did not correlate with any real advance in
41820-402: Was unrecognised. He said it was timely to draw on work he had done in the U.S. to write about the impact of the family historically in New Zealand. In 1978, when Olssen wrote an essay in The Gendered Kiwi , one writer stated that it indicated a shift in position by Olseen toward recognising the need for further research into the family as a primary site where gender is constructed. In 2008
42025-522: Was workers with significant autonomy in their jobs and pride in their skills who were most attracted to syndicalism. Moreover, he argues that explanations based on workers' occupations cannot explain why only a minority of workers in those jobs became syndicalists or why in some professions workers in different locations had vastly different patterns of organization. The small size of many syndicalist unions also makes observations about which workers joined statistically irrelevant. Syndicalism came to be seen as
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