|
Trade Union Education League
The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 (through 1928) as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Workers (Communist) Party of America from 1922. The organization did not collect membership dues but instead ostensibly sought to both fund itself and to spread its ideas through the sale of pamphlets and circulation of a monthly magazine. After several years of initial success, the group was marginalized by the unions of the American Federation of Labor, which objected to its strategy of "boring from within" existing unions in order to depose sitting union leaderships. In 1929 the organization was transformed into the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), which sought to establish radical dual unions in competition with existing labor organizations. Organizational history Origins The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was founde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a Revolutionary politics, revolutionary current within the Left-wing politics, left-wing of the Labour movement, labor movement that seeks to unionize workers Industrial unionism, according to industry and advance their demands through Strike action, strikes with the eventual goal of gaining Social ownership, control over the means of production and the economy at large. Developed in French labor unions during the late 19th century, syndicalist movements were most predominant amongst the Socialism, socialist movement during the interwar period which preceded the outbreak of World War II. Major syndicalist organizations included the General Confederation of Labour (France), General Confederation of Labor in France, the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) in Spain, the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI), the Free Workers' Union of Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. Although they did not regard themselves as syndicalists, the Industrial Workers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Buck
Timothy Buck (January 6, 1891 – March 11, 1973) was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (known as the Labor-Progressive Party from 1943 to 1959) from 1929 until 1962. Together with Ernst Thälmann of Germany, Maurice Thorez of France, Palmiro Togliatti of Italy, Earl Browder of the United States, and Harry Pollitt of Great Britain, Buck was one of the top leaders of the Joseph Stalin-era Communist International. Early life and career A machinist by trade, Buck was born in Beccles, England, and emigrated to Canada in 1910 reputedly because it was cheaper to book steamship passage to Canada than to Australia. He became involved in the labour movement and joined the International Association of Machinists and radical working-class politics in Toronto. He claimed to have been present at the founding convention of the Communist Party of Canada, though this is disputed. Not initially a leading member of the party, Buck came to prominence as a supporter of Jos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solomon Lozovsky
Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky (russian: Соломон Абрамович Лозовский, family birth name: Dridzo russian: Дридзо, 1878–1952) was a prominent Communist and Bolshevik revolutionary, a high-ranking official in the Soviet government, including as a Presidium member of the All-Union Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions, a Central Committee member of the Communist Party, a member of the Supreme Soviet, a deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs and the head of the Soviet Information Bureau ( Sovinformburo). He was also the chair of the department of International Relations at the Higher Party School. Lozovsky was executed in 1952, together with thirteen other members of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, in an event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets. He was the last and oldest Old Bolshevik to be murdered on Stalin's orders. Biography Born in 1878 in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of Ukraine in Russian Empire to a Jewish family (of possibly Sepha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrés Nin
Andreu Nin Pérez (4 February 1892 – 20 June 1937) was a Spanish communist politician, translator and publicist. In 1937, Nin and the rest of the POUM leadership were arrested by the Moscow-oriented government of the Second Spanish Republic on trumped up charges of collaborating with Francisco Franco's Nationalists and were tortured to death by Soviet NKVD agents. On 17 June 2013, 76 years after his death, the Parliament of Catalonia officially paid homage to him and his work on politics with special emphasis on his work as Justice Minister of Catalonia. Early life Born in El Vendrell, Tarragona, to a poor family (his father was a shoemaker and his mother was a peasant), Nin moved to Barcelona shortly before World War I; he taught briefly in a secular anarchist school but soon became a journalist and activist. In 1917, he joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Nin became a leader of the Spanish workers' movement, and was among the founders of the Communist Par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (Russian: Михаи́л Па́влович То́мский, born ''Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov''sometimes transliterated as ''Efremov''; Михаи́л Па́влович Ефре́мов; 31 October 1880 – 22 August 1936) was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader and Soviet politician. He was the Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s.Wynn, Charters. ''From the Factory to the Kremlin: Mikhail Tomsky and the Russian Worker'', University of Texas at Austin, 22 May 1996. ''University Center for International Research'', University of Pittsburg, 10 September 2002, www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1996-809-09-Wynn.pdf. Accessed 29 May 2021. In his youth, Tomsky worked at the Smirnov Engineering factory in St. Petersburg, but was eventually dismissed from that job for attempting to organise a trade union.. His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become a socialist and join the Russian Soci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Third Period
The Third Period is an ideological concept adopted by the Communist International (Comintern) at its Sixth World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928. It set policy until reversed when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933. The Comintern's theory was based on its economic and political analysis of world capitalism, which posited the division of recent history into three periods. These included a "First Period" that followed World War I and saw the revolutionary upsurge and defeat of the working class, as well as a "Second Period" of capitalist consolidation for most of the decade of the 1920s. According to the Comintern's analysis, the current phase of world economy from 1928 onward, the so-called "Third Period," was to be a time of widespread economic collapse and mass working class radicalization. This economic and political discord would again make the time ripe for proletarian revolution if militant policies were rigidly maintained by communist vanguard parties, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Class Consciousness
In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution that would "create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, property-less mass into the ruling class". Marxist theory While German theorist Karl Marx rarely used the term "class consciousness", he did make the distinction between "class in itself", which is defined as a category of people having a common relation to the means of production; and a "class for itself", which is defined as a stratum organized in active pursuit of its own interests. Defining a person's social class can be a determinant for their awareness of it. Marxists define classes on the basis of their relation to the means of production, especially on whether they own capital. Non-Marxist social scientists distingu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Unionism
Industrial unionism is a trade union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of skill or trade, thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations. Industrial unionism contrasts with craft unionism, which organizes workers along lines of their specific trades. History Early history Eugene Debs formed the American Railway Union (ARU) as an industrial organization in response to limitations of craft unions. Railroad engineers and firemen had called a strike, but other employees, particularly conductors who were organized into a different craft, did not join that strike. The conductors piloted scab engineers on the train routes, helping their employers to break the strike. In June 1894, the newly formed, industrially organized ARU voted to join in solidarity with an ongoing strike against the Pullman company. The sympathy strike demonstrated the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Working Class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colour") include blue-collar jobs, and most pink-collar jobs. Members of the working class rely exclusively upon earnings from wage labour; thus, according to more inclusive definitions, the category can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies, as well as those employed in the urban areas (cities, towns, villages) of non-industrialized economies or in the rural workforce. Definitions As with many terms describing social class, ''working class'' is defined and used in many different ways. The most general definition, used by many socialists, is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour. These people used to be referred to as the proletariat, but that term has gone out of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers (; January 27, 1850December 13, 1924) was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor. He encouraged AFL member unions to take political action to "elect their friends" and "defeat their enemies". In politics he mostly supported Democrats, and occasionally local Republicans. He led the opposition to immigration from China. During World War I, Gompers and the AFL energetically supported the war effort, attempting to avert strikes and boost morale while raising wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
