Chapter Three

The One Big Union In International Perspective: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism, 1900–1925

Larry Peterson

During the first decades of the twentieth century, workers in the advanced industrial nations attempted for the first time to organize themselves into industrial unions. Antecedents of modern industrial unionism date to the latter nineteenth century, when workers began to respond to the second wave of industrialization, but the movement to reorganize the labor union movement along industrial lines did not become general until after the turn of the century. Thus, between 1900 and 1925, the Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor) (CGT) in France became the first major labor union federation to base itself on industrial unions. Unskilled workers in the United States made persistent efforts to found either single industrial unions, as in steel and mining, or central industrial organizations, as in the American Labor Union (ALU) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Canadian workers, especially in the West, repudiated their traditional trade unions to join first the IWW and then the One Big Union (OBU). In Great Britain, the general workers’ unions expanded phenomenally in the great unrest between 1910 and 1920, and groups of skilled workers in the older craft unions began to advocate greater union solidarity in a variety of syndicalist, revolutionary industrial unionist, amalgamationist, and shop stewards movements. Finally, German industrial workers in the largest centers of industry in the Ruhr, the North Sea ports, and Middle Germany reacted to the First World War and the revolution of 1918–19 by repudiating the social democratic free unions in favor of revolutionary general workers’ unionism. Common to all these movements were the leadership of revolutionaries and the advocacy of the solidarity of all workers in “one big union.”

The purpose of this article is to analyze the movements of revolutionary industrial unionists in five countries. I have chosen Great Britain, France, Germany, the United States, and Canada for comparison because they show clearly the international similarities and national differences of the movement for industrial unionism.¹ The historiography of industrial unionism in these countries has developed to the point at which it is possible to compare the movement for industrial unionism across national boundaries. Indeed, a simultaneous reading of the labor historiography of these countries leads to the inescapable conclusion that industrial unionism after 1900 was a truly international phenomenon. The national focus of virtually all previous studies tends to obscure the general nature of the movement and makes a cross-national comparison all the more urgent if one is to understand the full dimensions and significance of revolutionary industrial unionism in the early twentieth century.

I will not attempt to narrate the general history of these movements, nor will I concentrate on their differences, since the national historiographies of each country already deal in detail with the unique features of each example. Rather, I will employ a method of abstraction from local peculiarities to analyze those features that all five countries had in common, in order to demonstrate the general tendency toward revolutionary industrial unionism.

Much of the existing literature, when it is not devoted to a narrative reconstruction of national industrial unions, concentrates on the problems of ideology and theory. However, one of the cardinal features of industrial unionism after 1900 was its ability to accommodate and pass through a variety of ideologies, none of which ever succeeded in dominating or defining the movement as a whole. British industrial unionism was symptomatic of this trend, for it passed through no fewer than five phases with varying ideologies, even as the movement maintained an integrity all its own. I will therefore say little about the ideology of industrial unionism and will concentrate instead on the social movement of workers. Workers developed their consciousness through this social movement primarily by means of economic action and organization rather than formal ideology. This paper will analyze those social structural factors that gave rise to revolutionary industrial unionism and the way in which workers responded to them in the course of the class struggle.

Economic Change and the Emergence of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism

After 1900, industrial workers responded to the social and economic changes begun in the late nineteenth century by building a movement for industrial unionism, and this movement set off a period of renewal and progress in labor union and socialist organization. It was, in the first instance, a reaction against the rise of corporate capitalism and the concentration of industry. The emergence of monopolies in control of vast industrial complexes underscored the weakness of a divided working class. The concentrated economic power of corporations and their ability to attack existing craft unions through technological innovation led to greater aggressiveness of employers against the labor movement. The need for unity among workers as a precondition for the defense of even limited economic goals was greatest in the United States and Germany, where monopolization had advanced furthest, but even in a country like France, where small-scale production was still predominant, the labor union movement felt the need for the unity of workers across craft lines. Especially in France, the active intervention of the state on the side of corporate capital before 1914 reinforced the advocates of a more industrially unified labor union movement. But the factor of repressive state intervention in strikes was apparent throughout the advanced capitalist countries. Loosely federated unions of craft workers, which organized only small groups of workers, if indeed any, in the new mass production industries and which left uncontested the control of management over the mass of unskilled workers, were no match for the state-backed resistance of employers.²

The growth of large-scale, monopolized industry challenged the traditional, craft-based labor union movement by undermining or eliminating the base of unions of skilled tradesmen. This occurred either through the dequalification of previously skilled labor, through the creation of entirely new, technologically advanced industries and factories that relied from the start primarily on unskilled and semi-skilled labor, or through the concentration of capital in industries, such as construction, in which a plethora of craft unions began to face larger, more powerful employers and unified employers’ associations.³ Advocacy of industrial unionism was everywhere a reaction to the inability of the traditional craft unions to defend workers in the newer industries and to the refusal of these unions to go beyond the defense of the privileged position of small groups of skilled workers at the expense of the unskilled and the labor movement as a whole. Where monopolized industry was most advanced and the refusal of the existing unions to organize the unskilled most blatant (in Germany, the United States, and the Canadian West) this reaction took the form of a rejection of craft unionism altogether. In France and Britain, where the labor movement had longer traditions, attempts at compromise solutions were made—in Britain, the amalgamation of craft unions and the creation of general unions alongside them; in France, the peaceful transformation of the CGT from local craft-based unions to industrial federations. In both cases, the industrial unification of the working class presupposed the superseding of the existing unions.

Moreover, by the early twentieth century, the state responded to industrialization and labor unrest by attempting to integrate the existing unions into the capitalist system. In addition to overt repression, the state began to experiment with “more subtle forms of social control” including collective bargaining, conciliation schemes, state welfare measures, and union recognition.⁴ Some employers and especially liberal state officials began to see the value of defusing worker discontent by recognizing the existing labor unions. In turn, many leaders of the established craft unions eagerly pursued the limited opportunities that opened up in this direction before 1914 and agreed to suppress traditional forms of union struggle and solidarity, such as the sympathetic strike, in exchange for a promise of nationally negotiated contracts and state arbitration services. The incipient integration and bureaucratization of unions in state welfare and collective bargaining institutions led to some material improvements for workers but also to a widening gap between workers and union members on the local level and to an increasingly centralized national union leadership. Industrial unionists reacted to this trend after 1900 by seizing on local dissatisfaction, by appealing to the traditions of militancy and solidarity that many skilled workers still supported, and by trying to organize the mass of unskilled workers, who were largely left out of the new arrangements among state, union leadership, and employers.⁵

All three trends—the concentration and centralization of capital, the undermining of unions of skilled craftsmen, and the reformist intervention of the state—were well under way before 1914. However, it was really the First World War that brought home how pervasive such changes were becoming. To fight the war, the military relied first and foremost on the cooperation of monopolized concerns; the pressures of armaments production and labor shortages undermined the base of traditional craft unions by rapidly diluting skilled labor; and the state, even in Germany, was forced to intervene in labor disputes to arbitrate settlements and recognize national union leaders. All the many little and not so little changes of the previous decades had culminated in undeniably qualitative changes in the functioning of the capitalist system and in the nature of industrial wage labor.⁶

The moves of the state toward intervention, both repressively on the side of corporations in labor disputes and co-optively in social welfare measures, also exposed the political weakness of the labor movement. It did not appear possible to the advocates of industrial unionism after 1900 to break the combined power of the state and employers through parliamentary reform. Nor were they satisfied with the new forms of social control that tamed the existing unions by incorporating reformist laborism into the welfare state. The new industrial unionists were not usually hostile to political action as such. In Germany, they remained active in the political parties, first in the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) (SPD) and later in the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) (USPD), Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany) (KPD), and Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany) (KAPD); in Great Britain, the organizers of the general unions were early supporters of various socialist parties, in the United States, the ALU and IWW were at first closely associated with socialist politics; in Canada, the OBU was led by members of the Socialist Party of Canada; even in France many socialists were active in the CGT and were probably numerically larger than the syndicalists who controlled the national organization. However, if the difficulties of organizing unskilled workers pushed industrial unionists to support a revolutionary socialist goal, the limitations of parliamentary parties convinced them that political action was insufficient either to defend the short-term economic interests of industrial workers or to achieve the long-range socialization of industry. Parliamentary social democrats ignored the positive role of economic militancy and tended to divide labor unionism from politics through a doctrine of economic determinism.⁷

Industrial unionists added an economic component to socialist revolution. They saw industrial militancy, in the form of direct economic action, as a necessary aspect of the revolutionary takeover of capitalist industry, alongside the overthrow of the bourgeois state, and they assigned to revolutionary labor unions the tasks of transforming capitalist production and organizing socialist industry after the revolution. The addition of an economic component to socialist revolution was the defining feature of all forms of the new industrial unionism. From the cooperative workshop control envisioned by the CGT to the IWW’s projected administration of socialist production through industrial unions, to the works councils of German revolutionary unionism after the First World War, general unions on the workshop, factory, and industrial levels were elevated to a position equal to and occasionally above political parties in the revolutionary socialist movement.⁸ The new unionists called for the economic solidarity of all workers, which in its most rigorous form culminated in attempts to create “one big union” of all workers. The preponderant power of corporations and the state, which circumscribed the possibilities of economic reform, also led the new unionists to tie the immediate defense of economic interests to a revolutionary economic goal and to see industrial unions as the most appropriate vehicle with which to oppose employers. Finally, the primitive organization and lack of union traditions among unorganized unskilled workers in the new mass production industries encouraged demands for all-inclusive general and industrial unions. Industrial workers reacted to monopolized industry, craft unionism, and the limitations of socialist politics and made a positive attempt to develop new forms of unionism and industrial economic action.

International Similarities and National Differences

Although industrial unionism after 1900 was an international phenomenon, it varied according to different national conditions. There were many instances of industrial unionist ideas being spread directly from one country to another through seamen and labor unionists in port cities, through the international contacts of labor leaders, or through Europeans who carried such ideas back to Europe after a period of activity in North America.⁹ However, the spread of industrial unionism only became possible because workers and labor unionists were receptive to foreign ideas. More important, even without foreign influences, forms of industrial unionism developed directly from conditions in each country. Industrial unionism was international in scope after 1900 because of similar conditions throughout the advanced capitalist world.¹⁰

The movements for industrial unionism in the United States and Britain are familiar to English-speaking audiences, as is the history of the CGT. The Canadian OBU and the German Arbeiter-Unionen are less well known; but knowledge of both is crucial in understanding the full range of industrial union movements. Both were founded immediately after the First World War at the crest of working-class radicalism growing out of the wartime experience. The Canadian OBU was founded by labor unionists in the western provinces in opposition to the conservative domination of the established unions by the numerically larger eastern provinces. Its growth was encouraged by the general strike in Winnipeg in 1919 and by strike movements in the extractive and transportation industries of the West. Economically, the OBU was based on an alliance of the unskilled in mining, transportation, and lumber (industries opened up in the West at the end of the nineteenth century) with skilled workers in the rail and metal shops of Winnipeg; organizationally, the OBU leveled the craft distinctions of existing unions to build a broad, unified union of all workers; tactically, it favored militant actions based on mass strikes and worker solidarity; and, politically, it rejected the moderate parliamentarism of eastern unionists in favor of a mixture of socialist politics and advocacy of the general strike. The German Arbeiter-Unionen were very similar to the OBU in terms of their economic base, unified organization, militant tactics, and radical politics. Like the OBU, the German Unionen started as breakaways from the established unions (primarily the social democratic miners, metal-workers, construction workers, textile workers, and transportation workers unions) before taking on a more positive life of their own. The distinctive features of these unions included their base in the most important centers of German industry and mining (the Ruhr and Lower Rhineland, North Sea ports, Berlin, Middle Germany, and Upper Silesia), their transformation of the works councils movement into the organizational base of industrial unionism, and their extremely close ties to political parties, especially their membership in the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU) and their alliance with the KPD. In addition, many revolutionary industrial unionists in Germany remained active in the established unions and had strong bases of support in some industries, like chemicals, where they favored strong, locally unified, factory-based industrial unions while refusing to affiliate with the independent Arbeiter-Unionen. More will be said about the specifics of the OBU and Arbeiter-Unionen, but even a brief description serves to point out the similarities in the industrial union movements after 1900 across national boundaries.¹¹

Nevertheless, each country produced its own version or versions of revolutionary industrial unionism, and it would be misleading to define the general movement by one model. Rather, there emerged a range of options with related fundamental assumptions, and these options can be analyzed according to a scale of tendencies within the movement. Such a scale can be established according to three major criteria: the period of industrialization and its effect on labor union organization, the type of economic organization adopted in each country to meet national conditions, and the attitude of industrial unionists toward political affiliation.

Industrial Unionism and Industrialization The first major division among industrial unionists can be traced to the period of each country’s industrialization and the age of its labor movement. Although some authors have seen the differentiation between industrial unionists as one between Europe and North America,¹² in fact the division occurred between those countries where the labor movement had already been strongly developed in the mid-nineteenth century and those where it grew primarily in response to the second wave of industrialization.¹³

In the older industrial nations with long labor histories—primarily France and Britain—industrial unionists tended to work inside the established unions. This was feasible in part because unions in these countries began to organize unskilled workers at an early date, as was the case with the new “general” unions in Britain from the late 1880s, which were quickly incorporated into the established labor union movement. Moreover, industrial concentration developed more slowly. In Britain, the craft unions adapted themselves to the slower pace of industrial change with fewer internal structural breaks, whereas in France the union movement continued the long tradition of what one historian has called the “socialism of skilled workers.”¹⁴ Although there was friction with some of the newer general and industrial unions, the older unions themselves produced strong internal movements toward amalgamation and cooperation with the new unions. Revolutionary industrial unionism developed in an environment of labor union continuity, and the industrial unionist, OBU, and syndicalist groups could act effectively as organized factions within the existing unions. In France, the syndicalists eventually won control of the CGT, having begun as only one of several factions. In Britain, the movement never coalesced into one organization but remained split among numerous radical groups (syndicalists, amalgamationists, industrial unionists, and shop stewards—most of which sought to transform the craft unions) and the general unions (all of which were founded under radical leadership).¹⁵

In the countries that industrialized largely after 1870—the United States, Canada, and Germany—revolutionary industrial unionism tended persistently toward dual unionism. In these countries industrial concentration, the growth of mass production industries, technological changes, and corporate control all developed in largely virgin territory, preceding, superseding, or breaking whatever labor union traditions had previously existed. In Germany monopolization and industrial concentration were already far advanced when the modern German union movement was founded in the 1890s; in the United States during the period from 1873 to 1900 these same economic forces disrupted the continuity of those older labor union traditions that culminated and then withered away with the Knights of Labor; in Canada the economy of the West grew largely outside of the industrial and union traditions of the East. Thus, in all these countries the gap between craft unions and unskilled workers in the new industries was great, and the craft unions widened the gap by retrenching in the face of corporate capital to defend the special interests of the skilled rather than by adapting union structures to technological changes or by organizing the unskilled. Moreover, in Germany the socialist movement was founded before the labor unions, and the unions were consequently very closely associated from the start with social democratic politics, another aspect of the late, technologically advanced industrialization of Germany. As a result, the movement for industrial unionism grew out of opposition to the subordinate, reformist role to which social democratic politics had relegated the unions.¹⁶ In all these countries, the impact of corporate industrialism was paramount in demonstrating the obsolescence of craft unionism and the need for an entirely new type of union. “Boring from within” appeared—and indeed largely was—futile, and industrial unionists drew the conclusion that new unions had to be created in competition with the craft unions.¹⁷

Organization The movement for industrial unionism was also characterized by different types of economic organization. Six major types (or degrees) of organization can be delineated.

1. Single local unions comprising all workers in one factory or local industry—what the Germans call a Betriebsorganisation—were most commonly breakaway unions that attempted prematurely to reorganize existing unions before union members and workers in other areas were ready to follow the lead of the vanguard. They were founded primarily in Germany after the 1918–19 revolution; they were usually closely aligned with political radicalism (with the KPD or KAPD); and they seceded from existing craft unions because of differences over strike tactics, politics, and industrial organization.¹⁸

2. Single industrial unions of a national scope were a step beyond revolutionary localism. They were most common in the United States as an attempt to overcome craft union divisions by uniting all workers in concentrated industries. Thus, Eugene Debs’s American Railway Union attempted to bring together all railway and rail shop workers into a single industrial front, while the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) completely bypassed eastern craft unionism by organizing western miners from the start in an industrial union. The British amalgamation movement also worked for the creation of this type of unified industrial union.¹⁹

3. Once industrial unionism expanded to several industries or became a more general movement, there appeared a natural tendency to form national union organizations to cover labor in all industries. The classic solution was found by the CGT in France. The CGT subdivided its national federation into a dual organization, horizontally (by geography) as a general union of all workers (united in unions locales and unions départementales) and vertically by industrial federations. To be sure, the CGT’s unions were local trades and labor assemblies in which member unions were represented. However, the unions originally grew out of the bourses du travail, in which union divisions as such had not been recognized; they were never merely federated bodies but have always had a general role and legitimacy of their own over and above individual member unions; and they have consistently acted as the center and mobilizer of the local union movement with an economic and organizational position that goes well beyond the local union federations of the Anglo-Saxon countries or Germany. Thus, the CGT functions in part as “one big union” but also as a federation of autonomous industrial unions.²⁰

4. A second, more radical solution to national organization was adopted by the IWW. Largely because of the concentrated power of American monopoly capital, the IWW wanted to create a centralized union on the national level (as opposed to the CGT’s federal organization), which could confront the centralized power of capital. The central union would be subdivided into industrial unions to defend the specific interests of workers in each major industry and to prepare for the eventual takeover of production by the revolutionary unions.²¹

5. German-American Wobblies carried the IWW model directly to Germany, but once in the German environment of monopolized heavy industry and postwar revolution they reinterpreted this model in an even more centralized manner. Both the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union (General Workers Union) (which was strongest in the North Sea ports and the steel industry of Düsseldorf) and the Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter (Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers) (which grew out of coal mining and iron and steel production in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia) placed emphasis on a single, central union of all workers. Such unions were based on works councils, elected by all workers in each factory or mine in the major monopolized industries, and attracted lesser categories of workers to this industrial core.²²

6. Nevertheless, the German Arbeiter-Unionen maintained subordinate industrial subdivisions, although they were not given separate status as industrial unions until forced to by the KPD and Red International of Labor Unions (RILU) in 1924. Revolutionary unionists in Canada carried centralized organization to its logical extreme by founding the One Big Union in 1919. All workers were organized in one union without regard to craft or industry, either in mixed locals or in central labor councils in larger towns. To be sure, there were strong movements for separate industrial unions within the OBU, especially among lumber workers in British Columbia and Northern Ontario. However, the core of the OBU recognized only general local unions more radically leveled than, but not unlike, the unions locales of the CGT.²³

Important as these differences in national organization were, it should be remembered that all industrial union movements tried to balance centralized structures with active local union bodies. For example, an initial step in the formation of amalgamated or original industrial unions in Britain and the United States was often the creation of shop committees that either represented all unions in an enterprise or all workers whether unionized or not. The election of shop stewards to represent all workers in their department was another first step in the direction of industrial unionism. Shop committees and the organization of shop stewards for the entire factory tended to grow out of strike movements and became especially prominent in Britain, Germany, and the United States during the First World War.²⁴

In Germany, the Arbeiter-Unionen took earlier forms of labor union organization, such as the traditional union Vertrauensmänner (liaisons between workers in the factory and union officials), and generalized them throughout the factory or mine. They also built upon the shop committees and bodies of shop stewards that grew out of wartime economic movements by making them part of the structure of industrial unions. These forms of shop organization were then coordinated with the works councils that workers formed spontaneously during the revolution of 1918–19. Indeed, Vertrauensmänner, shop committees, and shop stewards were usually the infrastructure out of which the works councils grew and upon which they built their strength. The result was a multi-tiered structure within each enterprise and industry in which all workers were represented. While the union Vertrauensmänner, shop committees, and shop stewards tended to perpetuate separate representation of skilled and unskilled workers, the works councils represented all workers within an enterprise equally, regardless of skill. When the works councils were regularized after passage of the Works Councils Law of 1920, the Arbeiter-Unionen turned their legally elected works councilors into the permanent base and local leadership of their industrial union organization. The novelty of such organization was that it simultaneously equated the union with the factory or mine, through the works councils, and integrated the councils into regional or national unions that comprised entire industries. In the event of and in preparation for a revolution such industrial unions were poised to seize control of both local factories and mines and entire industries and to administer both in a socialized economy. The unity of these organizational structures was summed up in the slogan of German revolutionary industrial unionists: one enterprise, one industry, one union (ein Betrieb, eine Industrie, eine Gewerkschaft). Thus, if centralization was the key issue of national union organization and the main area of differences from country to country, shop committees, shop stewards, and works councils emerged as the infrastructure of revolutionary industrial unionism and showed greater similarities across national boundaries.²⁵

The reasons for national differences in the organization of industrial union movements were varied and complex, and only the most important can be suggested here. First, despite similar international economic trends, there were many social and economic differences between countries. The different pace of industrialization between Britain and France, on the one hand, and Germany, the United States, and Canada, on the other, has already been mentioned and helps to explain the different organizational strategies of industrial unionists in these two groups of countries. In particular, the greater the concentration of ownership in industry and the larger the scale of production, the greater the emphasis on more centralized forms of organization and especially the greater the propensity to found unified national organizations of the OBU type rather than looser union federations. The movements in France and Germany can be seen as contrasting examples. In France, the persistence of more small-scale production lay at the foundation of the bourses du travail, which in turn grew into the unions locales within a strongly federalized system of autonomous industrial unions; while in Germany the extreme concentration and centralization of heavy industry in a few major areas encouraged the formation of the highly centralized and unified organization of Arbeiter-Unionen. Second, national labor traditions contributed to some organizational differences. Thus, in Britain traditions of solidarity among skilled workers transcended craft unionism and lay at the base of much of the amalgamationist and shop stewards’ movements; these traditions help to explain the British interest in reorganizing or building individual unions rather than founding a central or national OBU-type organization. In the United States the legacy of the Knights of Labor, a training ground and example for many later industrial unionists, established a model of all-inclusive national unionism that the IWW later tried to modernize in light of industrial changes since the late nineteenth century. Finally, the date of the founding of industrial union movements seems to have had some influence in the choice of organizational forms. The earliest movements tended to create single unions (such as the American Railway Union in the United States or the general unions in Britain) or to concentrate on the transformation of existing unions (as in both Britain and France), while the most centralized and consciously OBU movements (those of Germany and Canada) were founded in the aftermath of World War I. Thus, the years 1900–1925 might be characterized as a cumulative learning process on an international scale: industrial unionists after 1918 drew from the experience and ideas of the pioneers of the years 1900—1910 and consciously set out to found the OBU in its purest forms. The IWW was a sort of middle type both chronologically and organizationally, and its role in the transition from earlier individual industrial unions to the more centralized OBU and Arbeiter-Unionen can be clearly documented. On the one hand, earlier movements, like the American Railway Union (ARU) and the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) fed indirectly or directly into the IWW: on the other hand, the IWW was a direct predecessor of the OBU in Canada (the IWW was also a Canadian union before 1914) and a recognized precursor of the Arbeiter-Unionen and even a training ground for some individual union organizers in Germany. These examples illustrate some of the more important reasons for organizational differences among industrial union movements and point to the complexity of national differences within international similarities.

Politics and Industrial Unionism The movement for revolutionary industrial unionism exhibited a variety of attitudes toward socialist and labor politics, ranging from rejection of political parties to subordination to a vanguard party.

The industrial unionists of the period after 1900 are often considered to have been opposed to political parties, and this was indeed true of the syndicalists. The CGT, of course, came out openly against political parties, and the OBU in Canada later adopted a similar position, although it is questionable whether these organizations did so out of a general repudiation of political socialism or because they wanted to prevent the disruption of union work by hostile political factions.²⁶ Still, the antiparty position of the CGT and OBU merely defined one extreme and by no means the general sentiment of industrial unionists. The IWW, for instance, declared its political neutrality in order to concentrate its efforts on economic action and organization. It wanted to elevate the importance of industrial action within the revolutionary movement, but it did not oppose the participation of individual Wobblies in socialist politics. No less a leader than William Haywood made this point clear.²⁷ In Britain early leaders of the general unions and in France and Germany left-wing socialists (and later communists) actively favored the participation of union leaders in labor and socialist politics.²⁸ Germany, finally, produced the two most conscious and organized versions of union participation in left-wing politics. In Hamburg, the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union advocated the creation of what was called an Einheitsorganisation, a single organization of workers, based on the factory, which united political and economic work in one body. Labor unions and political party were surpassed by integrating their functions in a single revolutionary organization.²⁹ The Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter, on the other hand, formally endorsed the KPD, belonged to the Red International of Labor Unions, and eventually (in 1923–24) came under complete Communist Party control.³⁰ The syndicalists of the CGT opposed political parties out of fear that a Marxist party would win control of and then subordinate the unions and thus hinder the revolutionary direct action of workers. The counterparts of the French syndicalists in the revolutionary Arbeiter-Unionen of Germany interpreted the needs of the revolutionary movement in exactly the opposite way by affiliating with the KPD or KAPD as the necessary precondition of furthering both the economic and political sides of the class struggle. In both cases, national conditions determined the options open to revolutionary unionists. Whereas in France the disunity and divisiveness of the socialist movement made the political neutrality of the CGT imperative for its successful functioning, in Germany the long traditions of revolutionary Marxism and the outbreak of a political revolution in 1918 made political commitment seem just as imperative.

What was common to the political stance of all revolutionary industrial unionists was not hostility toward political parties as such but rather a position critical of the dominant wing of labor and social democratic parties before 1914 and the advocacy of industrial militancy as a necessary part of the revolutionary class struggle. In particular, revolutionary industrial unionists in general disagreed with the increasing concentration of labor and social democratic parties on parliamentary politics. The corollary of such an electoral strategy was that the workers’ movement adhered strictly to bourgeois legality even in countries like Germany, where no democratic system existed, and avoided potentially violent confrontations with the state. Moderate unionism, building upon existing craft unions and restricting tactics to the proven methods of craft union organization and action, was a necessary part of such a strategy. In response, industrial unionists argued—correctly—that electoralism and moderate unionism alone would not bring the mass of unorganized unskilled workers into the labor movement and that the organization of the unskilled would lead ineluctably to major confrontations with the biggest industrialists and through them, the state. The revolutionaries within the industrial union movement went one step further and tried to seize upon the opportunity offered by unionizing the unskilled to build a challenge to the capitalist system as a whole. Some carried this strategy to the extreme of thinking that seizure of the economy was alone sufficient to overthrow capitalism and that the organization of industrial unions was alone sufficient to seize the economy. But a more common position by far was that a militant economic strategy would be complementary to socialist politics. If industrial unionists concentrated their energies on economic organization, it was because they were labor unionists, first and foremost, who wanted to correct the imbalance in the socialist workers’ movement, not because they were antipolitical or because they underestimated the role of the state.

In conclusion, it is misleading to define one big unionism or revolutionary industrial unionism according to a single, exclusive model. Though an international phenomenon, it manifested itself concretely in direct relation to national conditions and traditions. The process of industrialization and union traditions were clearly important in deciding the receptiveness of workers to dual unionism. The relative maturity and degree of general support for the movement determined the type of local or national organization that could be created, although in terms of economic organization one can speak of a definite tendency toward “one big unionism.” Finally, political traditions—whether of divisiveness (France, Canada and the United States), parliamentary politics (Britain), or revolutionary Marxism (Germany)—affected the attitude of industrial unionists to political parties. The internationalism of the movement grew out of similar economic conditions in the advanced capitalist countries, the critique of social democratic politics, and the common desire to organize unskilled workers in industrial unions, but the specific response of workers in each country varied among numerous alternatives and nuances.

Was Revolutionary Industrial Unionism “Syndicalist”?

Because of the antipolitical position of the CGT and its imitators in other countries, most historians have labeled the revolutionary industrial unionism of the early twentieth century “syndicalist” without necessarily giving this word a precise definition. The syndicalists of the CGT, of course, won adoption of a coherent syndicalist philosophy in the charter of the union. But elsewhere the case is not nearly so clear-cut.

Most historians of the IWW have labeled it “syndicalist” despite the fact that Wobbly leaders consistently called themselves industrial unionists and distinguished themselves from syndicalists. Indeed, the most dedicated syndicalists, like William Z. Foster, left or drifted away from the IWW because of differences of opinion over organization and tactics.³¹ Moreover, David Montgomery calls the industrial unrest of the period 1909–22 “syndicalist” without defining what he means by this term or how avowed syndicalists fit into the movement.³² The major historians of the Canadian OBU repeatedly call this union a Canadian version of syndicalism, but nowhere do they show how the OBU was syndicalist or why this term is specifically relevant in this case. They could easily have left off the label without affecting their overall analysis of the OBU.³³ In Germany, social democrats have traditionally accused the KPD and its left-wing unions of being “syndicalist,” but in this case the purpose is patently propagandistic and based upon no analysis of the communist Arbeiter-Unionen.³⁴ In fact, there was a syndicalist union in Germany that briefly won mass support from miners and steelworkers in the Ruhr,³⁵ but this union failed to keep pace with mass sentiment for revolutionary industrial unionism and was quickly superseded by the communist Freie Arbeiter-Union (Gelsenkirchen) and Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter.³⁶ Finally, Bob Holton, in an analysis of British syndicalism in the period 1910–14, tries to extend the use of this term from uncontestably syndicalist organizations to the mass industrial insurgency and general labor unrest before 1914.³⁷ Whereas syndicalists were probably the most influential group of revolutionary industrial unionists in Britain from 1910 to 1914, this had not always been the case, and syndicalist influence declined once again after 1914, in favor of a variety of other organized groups of shop stewards and industrial unionists.

It is necessary first to define what one means by “syndicalism” before one can decide its applicability to revolutionary industrial unionism. Melvyn Dubofsky has offered a general definition that underlies the judgment of many historians. He refers to “syndicalism” as a form of industrial militancy among workers at the point of production that is directed at the takeover and running of industry by the workers themselves, outside the control or influence of political parties.³⁸ In my opinion, this definition is too narrow. It describes revolutionary industrial unionism in general but not what was specifically (and vocally) advocated by syndicalists, and it applies equally to explicitly nonsyndicalist movements such as works councils and shop stewards.

There are five distinguishing features of syndicalism that must be included in any definition. First, syndicalism favored federalism over central forms of organization and thus emphasized local autonomy. It opposed political parties and replaced political work with economic action and organization. Its supreme revolutionary strategy was the general economic strike, not the overthrow of the bourgeois state. After the general strike, workers would abolish the political state altogether and replace it with a federal, economic organization of society. Finally, this new social organization would be based on syndicats (hence the name of the movement), basic local units derived from the structure of craft and industry. Although many syndicalists supported industrial unions, industrial unionism itself was never a universally accepted part of syndicalist philosophy, and many syndicalists continued to envision the syndicats of the new society as craft-based (not industry-based) units.³⁹ And revolutionary industrial unionists, though often in agreement with individual syndicalist positions, never generally accepted the syndicalist philosophy as a whole.

A short digression on the terminology of the labor movement might be instructive at this point. The real terminological unity of the international movement for industrial unionism was not in the use of “syndicalism,” but in the use of “unionism” in a new, specific sense. In English, “union” can have two meanings in the labor movement: the first and most common refers to labor unionism in general, whether craft, trade, or industrial, while the second sense denotes the unification of all workers in a single, general organization. This second meaning was that of the OBU after 1900. In French, these meanings are rendered by different words. Syndicalisme—not to be confused with syndicalisme révolutionnaire, which is usually translated into English simply as “syndicalism”—means labor unionism in general. At the same time the CGT calls its subordinate geographic units unions locales and unions départementales, bodies that unite all workers without regard to trade or industry, analogous to the OBU of Anglo-Saxon countries. In German, the distinction of meanings is even more explicit. The general term for labor unions in German is Gewerkschaft, whereas Verband refers to concrete individual unions. Union, on the other hand, is a foreign word imported directly from the English after 1918 to denote the OBU. Hence, one speaks in general of the freie Gewerkschaften or concretely of the Deutscher Metallarbeiter-Verband. But the German counterparts of the OBU were called the Bergarbeiter-Union, the Freie Arbeiter-Union, the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union and the Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter. Unionismus, not Syndikalismus, was the name of the new movement. “Union” is the common international expression of the movement, and one should speak of “Unionism” (with a capital “U”) instead of “syndicalism.”

If one accepts this definition of terms, syndicalism was only one of several factions within a general movement in favor of industrial unionism. Only in a few albeit major cases like the CGT was this faction predominant, but in the other countries it remained one relatively small tendency among several others. What is really at issue is a movement in favor of revolutionary industrial unionism that arose under specific social, economic, and political conditions after 1900. The term “syndicalism” does not accurately describe this movement.

Bob Holton, although he prefers to call the movement syndicalist or proto-syndicalist, is on the right track when he makes an important distinction between the movement of unrest among industrial workers and the organized groups that tried to lead and influence it.⁴⁰ For there is a logical and historical difference between the two that is obscured and confused when one tries to render both as “syndicalist.”

For example, Holton calls the mass strikes in Britain between 1910 and 1914 “proto-syndicalist,” above and beyond any involvement of committed syndicalist militants. By “proto-syndicalist” he means the unofficial, insurgent, and expansive nature of many of the strikes in mining, transportation, or engineering. In such movements, which union leaders had difficulty containing, Holton points to the “primary importance of direct action over parliamentary pressures as a means of settling grievances, the desirability of industrial solidarity between workers in different industries, and above all at this stage the need for rank-and-file control over industrial policy.”⁴¹ He also emphasizes mass support for industrial unionism to oppose employers and further workers’ control and to mass sentiment against the union leadership in favor of periodic union elections and the recall of union leaders.

The interesting aspect of Holton’s description of British strikes is not their syndicalism but rather their similarity to expansive wildcat strikes in other countries between 1910 and 1925. His description of the water transport, dockers, and railway strikes of 1911, for example, could easily be transferred to the wildcat strikes in Rhineland-Westphalia from 1918 to 1924, and the fluid, flexible relationship of radical leaders and militants to the spontaneous mass unrest was fundamentally the same in Germany as in the earlier strikes in Britain. Yet in Germany, the unofficial movements tended to come under communist leadership. Workers turned to the KPD as the largest, best organized, and most prominent radical force in Germany to give the movement coordination.⁴² Just as syndicalists increased their influence in Britain in the years 1910–14, so communists entered the German strike wave as propagandists, agitators, and organizers. But it would be just as wrong to call the German strikes “communist” as it is to call the British ones “syndicalist.” What is common to both is the kind of mass unrest and the insurgent, industrial aspect of workers’ direct action. National traditions, economic and political conditions, and the general options open to the revolutionary left determined why the influence of syndicalists was on the rise in Britain before 1914 but that of communists more important after the Bolshevik revolution and the founding of the Comintern. But the mass movement is the interesting feature of such strikes. This and the relation of organized left-wing groups to it, that is, the structure of such movements, were fundamentally similar in both examples, although the ideologies of syndicalists and communists were themselves different.

All the factions that actively worked for industrial unionism took the raw material of industrial unrest and tried to raise the lessons drawn from it to the level of theory and tactics. They seized in the first instance on the economic grievances of workers, which preceded any coherent political consciousness. These immediate grievances tended to be localized in scope and encouraged opposition to state policies and national union leaders. And such discontent, as it grew, focused quite naturally on the local control of production by workers. Finally, mass unrest tended more and more often to take the form of wildcat strikes as the most effective way to break through the containment policies of the state and national union leaders. And under unstable social and economic conditions (more to be said of this further on), such wildcat strikes expanded spontaneously both geographically and from industry to industry until they took on increasingly general proportions. Not only syndicalists but revolutionary industrial unionists, councils activists, and communists developed their tactics in different, even opposing, directions from the same mass movement of social unrest.

One of the cardinal features of the industrial unrest and the movement in favor of industrial unionism from 1900 to 1925 was the convergence of three forces. After 1900, individual union militants and activists, formal left-wing organizations and propagandist groups, and mass unrest among industrial workers all converged in a general movement in favor of industrial unionism. The role of left-wing organizations lent the movement its revolutionary ideology; the participation of union activists, whether or not members of left-wing organizations, established a vital link between revolutionaries and unions; and the unrest of industrial workers provided the mass force to sustain and extend the movement. This was a real social movement in which the initially spontaneous industrial action of workers (mostly in strikes) opened the way for leaders and militants, and in which industrial workers themselves joined slowly in more organized forms of industrial unionism and direct action as they responded to the leadership and propaganda of union militants. To call this convergence of factors “syndicalist” is to miss the historical forces at work and to replace a process of change and revitalization in the labor movement with an arbitrary (and partisan) definition. Specific groups tried to give organization, leadership, and ideological coherence to this movement among rank-and-file workers, but they could never contain it entirely within one doctrine or organization, whether syndicalist or otherwise.

The Social Composition of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism

The international nature of this movement among workers is revealed by the social composition of workers who supported it or whose industrial militancy served as a spur or context for industrial union militants. Two groups of workers were especially prominent in strikes that led to demands for industrial organization. Unskilled workers in new or rapidly expanding industries were the most visible and characteristic supporters of the movement. Nevertheless, a significant number of skilled, traditionally unionized workers, usually in large industrial settings subjected to technological change, turned to industrial unionism as it became apparent that defense of union standards and adaptation to changes in production required the additional support of the mass of unskilled and semiskilled workers.

By far the most common supporters of revolutionary industrial unionism were miners. Hard-rock miners in the American West formed the core of the WFM, WLU (Western Labor Union), ALU and early IWW in the United States, and hard-rock and coal miners were prominent in both the IWW and OBU in Canada. Syndicalists first won mass influence in Britain among Welsh miners, and the continuing unrest among British miners after 1910 provided a context for the agitation of a variety of radical, industrial union groups. In France, syndicalists won support from miners around Saint Etienne. In Germany, coal miners in the Ruhr, and to a lesser extent in Upper Silesia and Middle Germany, formed the backbone of the Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter and provided the extensive mass support that made both the KPD and revolutionary one big unionism major economic forces in this most basic and politically sensitive German industry.⁴³

Workers in a variety of mass production industries and transportation joined the movement for industrial unionism or responded to the agitation of revolutionary unions. The specific industries varied largely according to the economic structure of each country. After mining, transportation was the most frequent setting of militant strikes and industrial union agitation. Railroad workers were drawn into the movement to a greater or lesser extent in all five countries; dockers supported the movement in parts of the United States, British Columbia, Britain, and Germany; British, American, and German seamen also joined the movement at different times, often carrying revolutionary industrial union propaganda from country to country.⁴⁴

Textile workers in the American East gave support to the IWW, while German textile workers in the region around Mönchen-Gladbach formed a secondary source of support for the Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter in Rhineland-Westphalia. Also typical of support for the IWW in the eastern United States were the new mass production industries that were later organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO): The IWW at its height led major strikes in the steel, rubber, and automobile industries. In Germany, the comparable mass production industries were to be found in the heavy industries developed from 1895 to 1918: Virtually every major steel mill in the Ruhr, the shipbuilding centers of Hamburg and Bremen, and all the big centers of chemical production (especially Leverkusen, Ludwigshafen, and Leuna) supported either one big unionism or revolutionary industrial unionism in one form or another. In Great Britain, the general workers’ unions organized the unskilled in these same mass production industries, especially in the period of labor unrest from 1910 to 1920. Lumber, wood, and agriculture formed another center of support where these industries were relevant, that is, in the Canadian West, northern Ontario, the American West and South, and Middle Germany. Indeed, the IWW was perhaps most successful in organizing the lumber industry and migratory agricultural laborers; the strongest group in the Canadian OBU was at first the industrial union of lumber workers; and one of the constituent organizations of the Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter was the communist Freier Landarbeiterverband of Middle Germany.⁴⁵

Common to all these industries were their creation or general expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and their reliance on vast pools of unskilled, often migratory or immigrant, labor. Unskilled, immigrant, and migratory workers were connected by their common difficulties in organizing unions and the type of union they needed. Unskilled workers in the new mass production industries were easily trained and just as easily replaced, and, as long as there was a steady oversupply of workers (as was generally the case, except at peak periods of demand for labor or in exceptional local circumstances), the unskilled lacked an individual possession (such as a skill) that could be used in bargaining against employers. The steady oversupply of unskilled workers came to a very great extent from immigrants, either from foreign countries or from internal migrations from rural to urban areas. In fact, the role of foreign immigrant workers in supplying unskilled labor was greater than is often assumed; it was by no means limited to the United States and Canada but was of considerable importance in several major industrial regions of Germany and was also a factor in areas of France.⁴⁶ By the same token, migratory workers were easily replaced, and while they tended to face smaller, scattered employers (as in agriculture or lumber) than industrial workers, their geographic dispersal, isolation, atomization, and lack of a permanent local base served to strengthen the hand of capital. To be organized at all, such workers had to adopt some form of industrial organization that would comprise all workers in the factory or workplace. The weakness of individual unskilled workers, the concentrated economic power of corporations in many industries, and the atomization and geographic dispersal of migratory workers made the concentration of worker power in industrial unions a precondition for achieving even limited economic goals. Only by organizing all workers in factory and industry could unions hope to control the supply of labor sufficiently to be able to stand up to employers.

The power of corporations was underscored by the industrial settings involved: the list of industrial workers who supported revolutionary industrial unionism and one big unionism contains a disproportionate number who worked in one-industry or company towns where individual corporations or employers’ associations controlled economic life. Coal mining, steel, textiles, and chemicals in Germany, mining and lumber in the United States and Canada, coal mining in South Wales, automobiles, rubber, steel, and textiles in the American East all fall into this category. The dual power of corporations and employers’ associations on the local and the national industrial level, which made it possible to suppress labor organizations, forced industrial unionists to adopt radical or revolutionary positions in favor of militant resistance to employers and the elimination of privately owned industry. Moreover, workers could and did turn the homogeneity of such towns to their own advantage. Although a dominant industry or corporation could use its immense power to keep unskilled workers atomized and to drive out the craft unions of the relatively small groups of skilled workers, union organizers themselves exploited social and economic homogeneity to make the industry as a whole the focus of the labor movement. Indeed, they went one step further. One-industry settings became a definite spur to one big unionism, a kind of unionism designed to unite all workers on the local level, most of whom worked in the same industry in any case, against the domination of the local economy by one or several large employers.

The unskilled, immigrant, and migratory background of such workers tended to blur the influence of national and indigenous working-class cultures and to underscore the common international conditions behind revolutionary industrial unions. Nevertheless, revolutionary industrial unionism was not confined to the unskilled but also appealed to at least some groups of native, unionized, skilled workers. Most craft workers did not support industrial unions; they remained loyal to the traditional craft-based unions in most advanced industrial nations. Only in France did craft workers in the CGT give their support to syndicalism in significant numbers and agree to the introduction of industrial unions even while they controlled the national union federation. Elsewhere, only very specific categories of skilled workers turned to industrial unionism, in particular, workers in metals and engineering and in construction. In France, metalworkers in Paris, Saint Etienne, and Saint Nazaire gave support to the syndicalists, and workers in metallurgy, foundries, and metal trades had organized industrial unions by 1914. In Britain, many industrial union activists, like Tom Mann, came from metals and engineering, and the amalgamation and shop stewards’ movements won their greatest support in old centers of metal production and engineering.⁴⁷ The Clyde ship-building industry is a particularly interesting case and can be contrasted with the one big unionism of the German North Sea ports.

In Scotland, the impetus for amalgamation and the shop stewards’ movement came from long unionized, skilled workers faced with the dissolution of skills during the First World War; such workers were trying to defend the traditional job control of unionized skilled workers by adapting it to changes in technology and production, in the process turning to new forms of union organization, shop committees, and workers’ control. In contrast, in Germany, where unionized skilled workers lacked the power and traditions of British metalworkers, revolutionary industrial unionism after 1918 was based directly upon the semiskilled workers that German employers had relied upon to man the shipbuilding industry since the industrialization of the 1890s and 1900s. The industry was the same in both countries, but the constellation of forces behind revolutionary industrial unionism was different.⁴⁸

Another center of support among metalworkers for revolutionary industrial unionism was in railway shops such as those in Winnipeg, the Pullman works in Chicago, and the railway repair shops in Berlin and Opladen. Such skilled workers were no longer isolated craftsmen but worked instead in concentrated industrial settings, alongside a growing number of semiskilled workers, in one of the major transportation industries. Just as railway workers were receptive to industrial unionism, railway shop workers tended to see the advantage of industrial organization.⁴⁹

Construction workers were of secondary importance in the movement for industrial unions, although in some areas they too gave support to the movement. The construction industry was far more decentralized than the other industries in which industrial unionists were active, and much of it remained small-scale and artisan based. However, in the larger urban centers and industrial regions, many of the same trends were at work as in the metal industry. In construction especially, we are concerned with a tendency in economic development, not a static or absolute level of concentration. As with skilled metalworkers and engineers, the main factors encouraging industrial unionism in construction were the tendencies toward dequalification of skilled labor, greater employment of unskilled labor, and concentration of capital in larger industrial construction firms and employers’ associations. Such factors, to differing degrees, were at work in the Canadian West, where mostly unskilled railway construction workers employed by railway corporations joined the IWW before 1914, and in Great Britain, where syndicalists found some support among construction workers, especially in London.⁵⁰ In Germany after 1920, the communists were able to keep most revolutionary construction workers inside the free unions.⁵¹ However, in the Ruhr, where the construction industry was exceptionally concentrated and integrated with coal mining, engineering, and the heavy steel industry, many construction workers defied communist directives and joined the Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter.⁵² In France, Parisian construction workers formed part of the core of syndicalist support, and the individual craft unions in the construction industry united to form an industrial federation between 1906 and 1914.⁵³

Thus, both unskilled and skilled workers were prominent in the movements for industrial unionism before 1925, although the former predominated numerically and more often caught the public eye. Relations between these two groups of workers are difficult to assess at this stage of research. Historians have tended to investigate each group separately, concentrating on the big strikes and organizing drives of the unskilled, while linking the skilled primarily to control struggles over the production process. Indeed, wage struggles set off most of the movements of unskilled workers, while the skilled workers who supported industrial unionism tended to do so in response to the restructuring of industry, to technological innovations, and to changes in work processes—all of which tended to undermine existing craft unions by whittling away at skilled workers’ immediate control of production through craft knowledge. There can be little doubt that wages were the most important concern of unskilled workers, for their atomization and economic weakness made it possible for employers to keep wages very low and to reduce them further in periods of economic crisis. Skilled workers had much more to defend than wages, and even their relatively higher wage scales were best defended indirectly by fighting for continued control over production processes. This basic division between unskilled and skilled workers found expression in the fact that the former tended to organize new unions around wage movements, while the latter were much more likely to try to salvage forms of craft control through the transformation of existing craft unions into more powerful amalgamated or industrial ones. Still, historians need to investigate possible links between the skilled and unskilled at the workplace and from there in industrial union struggles. One point, however, is clear, even at this stage of research. By 1920 large groups of unskilled workers went beyond wages to raise their own demands for worker control of production, especially through works councils or industrial union structures, while the demands of skilled workers to simplify and consolidate job categories and wage differentials in “rationalized” industries had great potential appeal for unskilled workers and spoke directly to many of their immediate concerns. It is impossible to say whether strong links betwen unskilled and skilled workers conditioned these overlapping demands, but labor historians should begin to look seriously at this possibility.⁵⁴

The role of working-class cultures and their impact on unskilled and skilled workers in the movements for industrial unionism are even harder to discern. The new towns and neighborhoods that grew up with the mass production industries in the decades immediately before and after 1900 were the sites of an entirely new working class, one that for decades was predominantly unskilled, immigrant, and highly mobile (according to fluctuations in employment). At the same time, extremely homogeneous areas—based on one social stratum within the working class, on one industry, and often around one company—could also have a profoundly settling effect and quickly laid the bases for a new working class culture. Nevertheless, there was a strong element of social instability in the new industrial regions, very much related to immigrant labor and the mobility of workers, that existed alongside elements of social cohesion, and this combination of instability and cohesiveness led to a particularly volatile working class after 1900. It affected workers’ attitudes toward both mass action and types of organization. In industrial towns with the opposite configuration—long-established industries dependent on a settled class of skilled workers, well-developed working-class cultures tied to the industrial environment, and strong traditional unions growing out of and linked closely with the culture of skilled workers—the workers’ movement lacked the volatility of the new industrial regions. Many of these towns were centers of working-class radicalism, but even in one-industry towns where skilled workers were subjected to mechanization and rationalization, the workers often tended to steer clear of the revolutionary industrial unions. They preferred the slower evolution of their stable, traditional union organizations.⁵⁵

The problem of working-class cultures becomes particularly complex when one considers those skilled workers who came to support industrial unionism. Did they live in older towns or neighborhoods but become radicalized at work because of mechanization or rationalization? Were their established routines disrupted by rapid urbanization? Did they, too, move to the newer urban, industrial regions and become subjected to many of the same cultural pressures as the unskilled? Or, even in these newer centers of industry, did they continue to live in socially homogeneous neighborhoods with other skilled workers and merely commute to work at big factory complexes where their fellow workers were mostly unskilled or semiskilled? From what is known of the skilled workers who supported industrial unionism, all these possibilities were true of at least some groups, but it is impossible to point to any definitive trends from the research that has been done so far.

Thus, what is known of the relations between unskilled and skilled workers in the years 1900–1925 poses more questions than it answers. However, a few very general conclusions can be drawn. The movement for industrial unionism from 1900 to 1925 was clearly the expression of workers in two settings, each tied in different ways to the expansion of industry, concentration of corporate power, and technological changes since the late nineteenth century. Moreover, the simultaneous radicalization of the unskilled and of specific categories of skilled workers reinforced the general movement in its tendency to spread from one group of workers to another. Finally, the complexity of the movement, especially the participation of unionized skilled workers, made it a more direct threat to the existing labor movement by creating a general industrial alternative, going well beyond just the unskilled, that challenged existing union structures, practices and politics.

High Point and Decline of the Movement

In the decade prior to 1910 industrial unionists gathered their forces and achieved their initial breakthroughs. The first groups of industrial unionists and syndicalists were founded in Britain at this time; in the United States, the IWW was founded, although it spent its first four years consolidating its organization in a series of factional fights; in Germany, left-wing social democrats began haltingly to reconsider union tactics in the mass strike debate. Only in France were revolutionary unionists successful in winning control of the CGT and in adopting the syndicalist Charte d’Amiens in 1906. However, even in France the transition to industrial unionism was only initiated between 1905 and 1910 and did not lead to immediate organizational successes.⁵⁶

After 1910 the movement gained momentum, expanded its organization, and began to penetrate the mass of industrial workers. The exact timing of its growth depended largely on social and economic conditions in each country. Of primary importance in the conjuncture of the movement’s development was the impact of inflation. Prices had steadily risen throughout the industrialized world since the turn of the century, and by 1910 the price increases—and the consequent decline in real wages and workers’ living standards—began to be generally felt. Holton has pointed to this factor in the outburst of labor unrest in Britain between 1910 and 1914.

Economic trends of this kind produced a massive build up of material grievance among workers. Mass unrest developed because the long-term trend of rising spending power was now checked, and because of the sharp contrast between working-class living standards and the conspicuous luxury consumption of Edwardian rentiers and manufacturers. Economic unrest of this kind did not by itself stimulate syndicalism, but it did provide a general sense of material deprivation on which revolutionary industrial movements might build. For grievances over wages inevitably created great pressure on orthodox trade unionism and on parliamentary socialism to bring improvement and reform. Any failure here led the disaffected to look further afield, in particular to the direct action philosophy of syndicalism which by-passed collective bargaining and parliament altogether.⁵⁷

It is thus not surprising that industrial militancy and the spread of revolutionary unionism reached a first peak in Britain just prior to the outbreak of war, and on the left the syndicalists were the primary beneficiaries of the strike unrest. French syndicalism grew in an environment of stagnating real wages before 1910. The period from 1909 to the entry of the United States into the First World War was also the high point of the IWW. The IWW reached its maximum influence in the American East in these years, when it led a series of major strikes in the mass production industries, then built its organization of agricultural laborers in the prairie states. Montgomery has also pointed to the impact of inflation after 1909 on the emergence of what he calls the “new industrial unionism” among unskilled workers outside the IWW.⁵⁸

The First World War made inflation a propelling force behind industrial unionism throughout the capitalist world. The pent-up grievances of workers over the decline of living standards, alongside of the war profiteering of the possessing classes, burst open in the wave of revolutions and mass strikes after 1918. David Bercuson has clearly shown the role of wages in the Winnipeg general strike and the mass movement behind the formation of the OBU. The renewed revolutionization of the CGT after the period of wartime collaboration—a revolutionization that culminated in the general railway workers’ strike of May 1920 and that contributed to the adherence of the French Socialist Party to the Comintern at the Congress of Tours—was also closely bound up with wartime sacrifices and expectations for economic improvements after the armistice. Germany, however, stands out as the classic example of the impact of inflation in radicalizing industrial workers. Not only did the decline in living standards lead directly to the mass strikes of industrial workers in 1918–19 (especially among Ruhr miners, but also among metalworkers and chemical workers throughout Germany) but the great inflation of the years 1921–23 revived and spread the revolutionary movement after the initial defeats of the 1918–19 revolution and the 1920 Ruhr uprising. It is no coincidence that the history of the Arbeiter-Unionen runs exactly parallel with that of the postwar inflation.⁵⁹

Groups of industrial unionists seized upon such economic unrest and mass action to organize industrial unions and to coordinate strike movements. They developed a set of tactics to meet the needs of unskilled, previously unorganized workers. Montgomery has succinctly summarized these tactics for the IWW, but his description could be used with only a few changes for any of the groups active in Canada, Britain, France, or Germany.

Agreeing that “trade lines have been swallowed up in a common servitude of all workers to the machines which they tend,” the delegates [at the founding IWW congress] decided to organize workers from the bottom up, enlisting first the unskilled and using their enthusiasm and power to pull the more highly skilled workers into action. This meant that the IWW had to replace the craft unions’ meticulous caution with dramatic tactics. It would scorn large strike funds, relying instead on mass appeals for aid, on the workers’ own spirit of sacrifice and on short strikes. It would reject all reliance on negotiations, labels, written contracts, trade autonomy and benefit funds and it would summon the workers to leave the decrepit “American Separation of Labor” and enlist in the new revolutionary union.⁶⁰

In fact, German communist Unionisten spoke in almost identical terms in attempting to build an alternative to reformist trades unionisn.⁶¹ Such tactics were not just an abstract ideology but rather grew out of the conditions of industrial workers.

Revolutionary unionists elaborated these tactics in two major directions during and after the First World War. On the one hand, they tried to put their previous advocacy of the general or mass strike weapon into practice. The First World War and postwar period in fact led to a series of mass strikes, industrywide strikes, and general strikes. All types of revolutionary unionists used the industrial militancy of workers to put their ideas in practice: French syndicalists in the general railway strike of May 1920, their American followers in the steel strike of 1919, German communists in the waves of mass strikes in 1918–19, 1920, and 1921–24, and other groups of revolutionary unionists not previously associated with syndicalism, such as those who led the Winnipeg general strike in Canada. And these were only the most spectacular examples. On the other hand, revolutionary unionists introduced new forms of organization, aimed specifically at workers’ control of production, during and after the war. Indeed, “control of production” became a major slogan of both the British and German labor movements after the First World War. The shop stewards’ movement in Britain and Germany and the revolutionary councils movement in Germany and Italy were the primary examples of this new mode of action. General/mass strikes and works councils/shop stewards together amounted to a revolutionary challenge to capitalist control of the economy: the first was aimed at the eventual seizure of industry as a whole, while the second attempted to establish workers’ control at the point of production. Both were predicated upon industrial unions uniting all workers in factory, mine, or workshop organizations.⁶²

The movement for revolutionary industrial unionism rose and fell with this industrial unrest. It was defeated everywhere between 1919 and 1925. The reasons for the defeat were complex, but they were closely bound up with the revolutionary nature of the movement. For the movement culminated in an open confrontation with employers and the state, and it relied upon a loose form of organization and upon tactics adapted to mass unrest among industrial workers. If the revolution failed, the industrial unions had no strong organization to fall back on. Once the militancy and dynamism of the movement were checked, the organizational deficiencies became apparent, and most of these unions could not scrape through the hard times that followed. A few survived, but only by discarding their militant or revolutionary orientation. The difficulties in organizing unskilled industrial workers might account for the rapid decline of members after 1920–25, but they cannot explain the overall failure of these unions. The traditional unions, for example, had also gone through early membership crises and cyclical losses of members after major defeats and economic recessions, but while some of these trade unions collapsed, the movement in the long run survived and grew. Moreover, in the first decades of the twentieth century, there were examples of reformist industrial or semi-industrial unions that maintained a fairly tight and stable organization of unskilled workers. Yet the workers who formed OBU-type unions consciously rejected these established industrial unions. Germany is a good example of this: The miners, steelworkers, and construction workers in the Ruhr who joined the Arbeiter-Unionen explicitly rejected the traditional unions, even though the old miners’ union was already an industrial union and the Metalworkers’ Union and the Construction Trades Federation were both amalgamated unions. The major reasons behind this rejection were the reformist politics of the free unions and their bureaucratic organization, both of which inhibited mass action and dynamic organizing of new groups of workers. This does not mean that the leaders of the revolutionary industrial unions (not to speak of the membership) were uncompromising in their advocacy of revolution, but they did tend to see the militancy and dynamism of the movement as their main source of power in extracting material improvements over wages, hours, and working conditions. And such militancy reinforced the movement’s revolutionary orientation.

On the other hand, it was not so much the workers or their leaders who were uncompromising (although there are numerous examples of this, and it is not uncommon for newly organized workers, in the first flush of their mass union strength, to be uncompromising in their demands). Rather, the employers, the state, and the traditional unions were the uncompromising parties, unalterably opposed to any sort of recognition of the new unions. Especially after the Russian Revolution—when most industrial unionists initially supported the Soviet regime—the forces of order were bent on destroying revolutionary and industrial unions, for political as well as economic reasons. The confrontations with employers and the state took the form of major strikes, pitched battles in which compromise solutions were rarely possible. The revolutionary intentions with which industrial unionists used direct economic action (and the revolutionary implications of many of the larger unofficial strikes even where there were no revolutionary intentions) made the state and employers defend their positions with all the weapons at their disposal. Moreover, the craft unions fought back to defend their own positions against the industrial unionists, and they found themselves tacit—and often open—allies of employers and the state. The strike confrontations in which the revolutionary industrial unions were decisively defeated were indeed pitched battles: The established powers wanted clearcut victory and threw their power into exterminating the new unions. All of the strikes were eventually defeated by the superior power of these combined forces.

Nevertheless, the crux of the problem was the new unions’ reliance on loose, dynamic organization for the achievement of both short-term material improvements and long-term revolutionary goals. The loose organization of the revolutionary unionists could not survive defeat, and one by one the organizations dissolved, split, or declined. The revolutionary strategy and militant tactics of the movement had decisively conditioned the type of organization that developed. To be sure, the new unions often adopted a loose form of organization because of the difficulties in organizing masses of previously nonunionized, unskilled workers. In fact, as it has been pointed out, the leaders of the movement had consciously justified their new form of organization in this way in their polemics against the craft unions. But they refused later to tighten or stabilize their organizations largely because of their revolutionary orientation, because they did not want to deaden the militancy or mass action of the movement.

Finally, the militancy and mass action of workers, upon which industrial unionists based their overall strategy, came to an abrupt end in the early 1920s, when economic conditions changed drastically. The stabilization of the post war capitalist regimes, which was conditioned in large part by the economic and political defeat of industrial workers, brought with it an end to the inflationary cycle. The inflation, which had propelled the workers’ movement for two decades, was followed by a deflationary cycle in the mid-1920s. Economic crisis and unemployment, followed by downward pressure on wages and economic stabilization, put an end to the mass unrest and industrial militancy in which revolutionary industrial unionism had grown. It was left for the Comintern to pick up the pieces and to save what was left to be saved. Perhaps the greatest weakness of revolutionary industrial unionism between 1900 and 1925 was its dependence upon the spontaneous movement of unrest among industrial workers. It failed—by and large consciously—to create stable, permanent union organizations because the goal of the movement was not just the reformist defense of limited material demands, but also the socialist transformation of the economy.

*   *   *

In a more general sense, I would argue that it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a dynamic OBU-type movement over a long period of time. The reliance of the OBU on mass action and mass participation, its class struggle approach to limited demands for material improvements, and its consistent refusal to tighten its organization for fear of deadening its dynamism with bureaucracy were all linked to its revolutionary orientation, and these factors mitigated against the survival of OBU-type unions in periods when workers were neither revolutionary nor militant. By dropping class struggle and revolution, the industrial unions of the 1930s and 1940s were accepted as bargaining partners in a way the OBU movements never could have been. In other words, while the OBU movements were certainly willing to compromise with employers over wages, hours, and working conditions on a short-term basis, they never accepted the idea of binding contracts and would never have entered into the compromise with the capitalist system that was at the base of the acceptance of industrial unions by employers and the state a generation later. As long as OBU unions were serious about being revolutionary, they could not stabilize themselves around the more modest objectives of other unions but could only survive as long as a period of great militancy, with an upward movement of mass workers’ action, justified the belief in revolution in the relatively near future or when there was a real revolutionary upheaval, as in the years 1918–20.

Nevertheless, from a larger historical perspective, the revolt of the unskilled between 1910 and 1925 was a dress rehearsal for the wave of industrial unionization that overtook the western capitalist world in the mid-1930s and 1940s. Though defeated everywhere, one big unionism fed into both international communism and, later, industrial unionism.⁶³ Later organizations of industrial unions dropped the revolutionary side of the earlier movement and established in its stead a stable, workable compromise between autonomous industrial unions and general national federations of all industries. The Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), Canadian Congress of Labor (CCL), CGT, and Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (German Labor Union Federation) all achieved such a compromise. In one sense, they had learned from the failures of earlier industrial unions and set out to improve conditions for industrial workers by concentrating their efforts on limited material goals that could be quickly won and could solidify the foundation of permanent industrial organizations. Such limited goals included not only wages, hours, and working conditions but also the nationalization of key industries, institutionalization of at least a modest level of union political influence, and the creation of organs, like works councils, for worker participation and at times co-determination in some aspects of the production process. Some of these industrial unions still considered themselves part of a larger socialist or communist movement, but they interpreted this as an alliance with a political party, in which the party carried the burden of revolutionary politics.

The successful creation of stable, officially recognized industrial unions seems to have put an end to the call for “one big union” since 1950. The OBU might thus be called historically specific. In western Europe and North America it was the first stage in the general organizing of the unskilled, the ideology of the unskilled in their first period of revolt. Nevertheless, one should not be too quick to close the book on the OBU. It has, on more than one occasion, been associated with intense working class radicalism and industrial challenge to the wage system; it has given such radicalism a pronounced ideology of class solidarity on the economic front, with the ultimate goal the taking over of industry by workers to be run by workers. Although such movements rarely, if ever, survive defeat, one cannot rule out the possible emergence of similar movements in the future. There is no final formula for organizing workers into unions in periods of great militancy or in revolutionary periods. The OBU offered one way of balancing organization with dynamism, but the problem of economic radicalism will arise anew with each upturn in the class struggle. In a future upsurge of industrial militancy—perhaps around workers’ councils instead of industrial unions—the call for “one big union” may be heard again.

Notes

This is a revised and somewhat expanded version of the article originally published in Labor/Le Travailleur 7 (Spring 1981).

I would like to thank Gregory Kealey and the members of the North American Seminar of the History Department at Dalhousie University for their criticism and suggestions in revising an earlier version of this article.

1. The movement was not, of course, limited to these countries. It extended to Australia, Latin America, southern Europe, and Scandinavia. However, the movements in these areas introduced no features that did not already appear in the “models” of the IWW in America, the OBU in Canada, or the CGT in France, nor did they add to the politicization and works councils of the German example and the organizational diversity of revolutionary British unionists. Cf. Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies (Garden City, N.Y., 1967), 273–293; David L. Horowitz, The Italian Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 51–87; Gerald H. Meaker, The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914–1923 (Stanford, 1974).

2. Bob Holton, British Syndicalism 1900–1914 (London, 1976), 27 ff.; Jacques Julliard, Clemenceau briseurs de grèves (Paris, 1965); Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All (Chicago, 1969), 5–56; Larry Peterson, “The Policies and Work of the KPD in the Free Labor Unions of Rhineland-Westphalia 1920–1924,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1978, 1–27; Manfred Bock, Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918–1923 (Meisenheim am Glan, 1969).

3. See Branko Pribićević, The Shop Stewards’ Movement and Workers’ Control 1910–1922 (Oxford, 1959); H. A. Clegg, General Union in a Changing Society (Oxford, 1964); Richard Hyman, The Workers’ Union (Oxford, 1974); Karl-Gustav Werner, Organisation und Politik der Gewerkschaften und Arbeitgeberverbände in der deutschen Bauwirtschaft (Berlin, 1968); Helmut Kral, Streik auf den Helgen (Berlin, 1964).

4. Holton, 31.

5. Holton; Bock; F. F. Ridley, Revolutionary Syndicalism in France (Cambridge, 1970); Heinz Josef Varain, Freie Gewerkschaften, Sozialdemokratie und Staat (Düsseldorf, 1956); David Montgomery, “Machinists, the Civic Federation, and the Socialist Party,” in Workers’ Control in America (Cambridge, 1979); and Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Volume V: The AFL in the Progressive Era, 1910–1915 (New York, 1980).

6. The case of Germany during the First World War has been particularly well studied. See Willibald Gutsche, Fritz Klein, and Joachim Petzold, Deutschland im erstern Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1968–69); Werner Richter, Gewerkschaften, Monopolkapital und Staat im ersten Weltkrieg und in der Novemberrevolution (1914–1919) (Berlin, 1959); Gerald Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor in Germany 1914–1918 (Princeton, 1966); Jürgen Kocka, Klassengesellschaft im Krieg (Göttingen, 1973).

7. Holton, 27; Ridley, 53–62, 88–94, 177–179; Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900–1921 (London, 1969), 12–13, 28–33; Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 69–76, 91–119, 131–145; Val R. Lorwin, The French Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 43; Vernon H. Jensen, Heritage of Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y., 1950), 54–71, 160–196; Joseph R. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement (Syracuse, N.Y., 1969); Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume IV: The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905–1917 (New York, 1965), especially 167–171; Peterson, 28–43; and Carl E. Schorske, German Social Democracy 1905–1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955); Gerald Friesen, “‘Yours in Revolt’: Regionalism, Socialism and the Western Canadian Labour Movement,” Labour/Le Travailleur (1976), 139–157.

8. Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 166–168; Foner, IWW, 142–144; Bernard H. Moss, The Origins of the French Labor Movement 1830–1914 (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1976); Peter von Oertzen, Betriebsräte in der Novemberrevolution (Düsseldorf, 1963); Karl Korsch, Arbeitsrecht für Betriebsräte (Berlin, 1922).

9. Renshaw, 273–293; Bock, 77–80, 211–214; C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (New York, 1961). Such internationally known labor leaders as Tom Mann, William Z. Foster, James Larkin, James Connolly, and Fritz Wolffheim were at one time or another active in foreign countries, not to speak of international syndicalist conferences as forums for the spread of ideas.

10. Dubofsky, “Origins of Western Working-Class Radicalism,” in Peter N. Stearns and Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Workers in the Industrial Revolution (New Brunswick, N.J., 1974); We Shall Be All, 13–56; Foner, IWW, 23; Holton, 27; Peterson, passim; David J. Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men (Toronto, 1978), 252 ff.

11. See David J. Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg (Montreal, 1974); Fools and Wise Men; A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels and Revolutionaries (Toronto, 1977); Martin Robin, Radical Politics and Canadian Labour 1880–1930 (Kingston, Ontario, 1968); Bock; Peterson; and Erhard Lucas, “Ursachen und Verlauf der Bergarbeiterbewegung in Hamborn und im westlichen Ruhrgebiet 1918/19. Zum Syndikalismus in der Novemberrevolution,” Duisburger Forschungen 15 (Duisburg, 1971), 1–119.

12. Holton, 18.

13. Joseph Conlin also notes the international complexity of the movement, which did not follow European-North American divisions. Joseph R. Conlin, Bread and Roses Too (Westport, Conn., 1969), 17 ff.

14. Cf. Moss.

15. See Holton; Clegg; Hyman; Pribićević; and James Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’ Movement (London, 1973). For the continuity of the French labor movement see Moss.

16. Cf. Schorske; Bock; and Peterson.

17. Dubofsky, “Origins of Western Working-Class Radicalism”; We Shall Be All, 57–87; Jensen, 38–53, 54–71; McCormack, 3–17; Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, 1–44; and Fools and Wise Men, ix–xvi, 1–28.

18. Peterson, 415–417, 634–663.

19. Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike (Chicago, 1942); Stanley Broder, Pullman (New York, 1967); Dubofsky, “Origins of Western Working-Class Radicalism”; Jensen, 54–71; Pribićević, 65–82.

20. In general, see Jean-Daniel Reynaud, Les syndicats en France, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1975); and André Barjonet, La C.G.T. (Paris, 1968), For organizational developments, see Moss, 143–153; Lorwin, 23–25; J. A. Estey, Revolutionary Syndicalism (London, 1913), 32–48; Ridley, 69–77; Marjorie Ruth Clark, A History of the French Labor Movement (1910–1928) (Berkeley, 1930), 24–39.

21. Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 84–85; Foner, IWW, 37–38.

22. Bock, 125–126, 195–224; Peterson, 871–883.

23. Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men, 166–168. The most informative writer on the OBU’s organization is Robin, 187–189.

24. Cf. Montgomery; Foner, AFL; Pribićević; Hinton.

25. Cf. Carmen J. Sirianni, “Workers’ Control in the Era of World War I: A Comparative Analysis of the European Experience,” Theory and Society 9, no. 1 (1980), 29–88.

26. Moss, 136–155, especially 141 ff.; Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men, 220–227; William Rodney, Soldiers of the International (Toronto, 1968), 45–58; Ivan Avakumovic, The Communist Party in Canada (Toronto, 1975), 28–31; Robin, 193–197. The OBU was not initially opposed to political parties. Indeed, its leaders in 1919 came almost exclusively from the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). The anti-party stance of the OBU dates from 1921, when the main issue was adherence to the Third International and RILU.

27. Cf. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood; Bread and Roses Too, 27–35, 41–63.

28. Cf. Clegg and Hyman; Kendall, 7; Peterson, passim; Clark for the pro-communist CGTU in France.

29. Bock, 214–224.

30. Peterson, 198–199, 471–473, 640–646, 683–684; Bock, 167–187.

31. Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 169–170; Renshaw; Foner, IWW, 19–24, 157–171; Paul Brissenden, The IWW (New York, 1919); Conlin, Bread and Roses Too, 11–13, 23–24; Foner, IWW, 415–434. Conlin, in both Bread and Roses Too and his biography of Big Bill Haywood, argues forcefully that the IWW was not syndicalist.

32. Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 91–112.

33. Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, 89; Fools and Wise Men, passim; McCormack, 98, 112–113, 143 ff.; Robin, 150–151, 171–177, 275. Robin is perhaps the most explicit, certainly the most insistent, in labelling the OBU syndicalist.

34. This was a standard part of SPD and free union propaganda against the communist opposition in the Weimar Republic. It is repeated by Ossip K. Flechtheim, Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik (2. Auflage, Frankfurt am Main, 1971), 122–23, 261, 273; and Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung desdeutschen Kommunismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 329; cf. Peterson, 827–837, for a critique.

35. Bock, 118–120, 122–138, 160–161, 167–187; Erhard Lucas, Zwei Formen von Radikalismus in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Frankfurt am Main, 1976); “Ursachen und Verlauf.”

36. Peterson, 343–345; and Martin Martiny, “Arbeiterbewegung an Rhein und Ruhr vom Scheitern der Räte- und Sozialisierungsbewegung bis zum Ende der letzten parlamentarischen Regierung der Weimarer Republik (1920–1930),” in Jürgen Reulecke, ed., Arbeiterbewegung an Rhein und Ruhr (Wuppertal, 1974), 241–273.

37. Holton, 17–21.

38. Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865–1920 (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1975), 105.

39. Whereas both one big unionism and industrial unionism became central tenets of the CGT (and indeed outlived syndicalist control), the German syndicalists of the Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften and the Freie Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands (Syndikalisten) never evolved even after 1918 beyond the original syndicalism of craft-based unions. Cf. Bock, 23–24, 109.

40. Holton, 19–21.

41. Ibid., 118–119.

42. Peterson, 117–139,242–254,361 ff., 387–411, 476–501, 518–556, 604–626.

43. Jensen; Foner, IWW, 14–15, 486–517; Dubofsky, “Origins of Western Working-Class Radicalism”; We Shall Be All, 19–56, 120–126, 301–307, 319–383, 366–393, 476–477; Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Hardrock Miners (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1974); Holton, chapter 5; Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men, 114–115, 136–146, 188–214, 234–246; McCormack, 36–41, 98–114; Donald Avery, “Dangerous Foreigners” (Toronto, 1979), 53–54, 56–57, 80–82; Robin, 179–180 ff., 275; Bock, 160–161; Peterson, 735–743; Peter N. Stearns, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labour (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971), 39, 98–99.

44. Lindsey; Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 448, 474–475; Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 107; Holton, 89–110; Bock, 160–161; Peterson, 638, 650; Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men, 114–115, 155 ff.; McCormack, 44–48, 98–117; Robin, 150–151; Stearns, 50, 70–71; Lorwin, 25; Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français 1914–1920 (Paris-The Hague, 1964) 359–547.

45. Foner, IWW, and Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, go into detail on these sources of IWW support. For Germany, see Peterson, 168, 198, 415–417, 638–639, 743–748, 749–750; and Bock, 160–161. Also Eva Cornelia Schöck, Arbeitslosigkeit und Rationalisierung (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), especially 123–141 on the chemical industry; Helmut Gätsch, Die Freien Gewerkschaften in Bremen 1919–1933 (Bremen, 1969); Richard A. Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg (Stanford, 1966). For Britain, see Hyman and Clegg. For Canada, Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men, 134–136, 165–170; McCormack, 98–117; Avery, 80–82; Robin, 179–180 ff., 275. Specifically on the American lumber industry, see Robert L. Tyler, Rebels in the Woods (Eugene, Ore., 1967).

46. Lucas, “Ursachen und Verlauf” and Zwei Formen von Radikalismus; Avery; Gerald Rosenblum, Immigrant Workers (New York, 1973); and Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 32–47.

47. Pribićević, passim; Holton, 148–154; Stearns, 39, 42, 98–99; Lorwin, 25.

48. Pribićević; Hinton; Kendall, 105–141; Kral; Volker Ullrich, Die Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung vom Vorabend des ersten Weltkrieges bis zur Revolution 1918/19 (Dissertation, Hamburg, 1976).

49. Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg; Robin, 189 ff.; Lindsey; Peterson, 638.

50. Holton, 154–163; McCormack, 48, 98–117; Avery, 54–55; Foner, IWW, 227–231.

51. In Germany, the construction unions had already turned to amalgamated and semi-industrial forms of organization before 1914, so that the communists could argue against the necessity of forming revolutionary dual unions. Thus, even when KPD-controlled construction union locals were expelled from the free unions, the KPD organized a “union of the expelled” (the Verband der Ausgeschlossenen Bauarbeiter) to fight for readmission rather than an independent revolutionary industrial union.

52. Peterson, 748–749.

53. Stearns, 42, 50–51, 96; Lorwin, 25.

54. For a particularly good discussion of some of these questions, see Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 113–138, and his article on “Immigrant Workers” in the same volume. In Germany in the 1920s, the German Metalworkers’ Union (before 1918 an amalgamated union dominated by skilled craftsmen and the largest union in Germany) reorganized itself internally to follow the industrial structure of the works councils and made the simplification and reduction of wage differentials one of its primary goals in wage negotiations.

55. By far the best comparative case study of workers’ cultures and their differential impact on the organized labour movement is Erhard Lucas’ study of the Rhenish-Westphalian towns of Remscheid and Hamborn in Zwei Formen von Radikalismus. For the creation of a new working-class culture in the new industrial regions (especially among the unskilled) and its effect on labor radicalism, see James E. Cronin, “Labor Insurgency and Class Formation: Comparative Perspectives on the Crisis of 1917–1920 in Europe,” in this volume.

56. Holton, 39–51.

57. Holton, 28.

58. Stearns, 17–18. For the United States, see Foner, IWW; Dubofsky; and Montgomery.

59. Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, 22–44; D. C. Masters, The Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto, 1950). Kriegel; Peterson, 199–203, 211–226, 347–361, 387 ff., 476–480, 518 ff.; Bock, 87; Jürgen Kuczynski, Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter unter dem Kapitalismus, Vols. 4–5 (Berlin, 1966); Erhard Lucas, Märzrevolution 1920, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1970–74); “Zur Ursachen”; Zwei Formen von Radikalismus.

60. Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, p. 92.

61. Peterson, chapter 12.

62. For the postwar strikes, see the studies by Kriegel, 359–547; Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg; McCormack, 158–164; Lucas, “Zur Ursachen”; Zwei Formen von Radikalismus; Peter von Oertzen, “Die grossen Streiks der Ruhrbergarbeiterschaft im Frühjahr 1919. Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über die revolutionäre Entstehungsphase der Weimarer Republik,” in Eberhard Kolb, ed., Vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik (Cologne, 1972), 185–217; Gerald D. Feldman, Eberhard Kolb, and Reinhard Rürup, “Die Massenbewegungen der Arbeiterschaft in Deutschland am Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (1917–1920),” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 12 (1972), 84–105. For the councils’ movements, see Pribićević; Hinton; Kendall, 142–169; von Oertzen, Betriebsräte; Peterson, 871–890; Spriano; Cammett, 19–31; 65–122; Horowitz, 142–153.

63. Former revolutionary industrial unionists from the years 1900 to 1925 dot the history of the communist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Although many left the Red International of Labor Unions along with the syndicalists in the early 1920s, an equally large number stayed with the communists and contributed directly or indirectly to the later triumph of industrial unionism, in which communists played a major role.