Canadian Labor Revolt
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Canadian Labor Revolt
The Canadian Labour Revolt was a loosely connected series of strikes, riots, and labour conflicts that took place across Canada between 1918 and 1925, largely organized by the One Big Union (OBU). It was caused by a variety of factors including rising costs of living, unemployment, intensity of work, the unwillingness of employers to recognize unions, and the ongoing international revolution. The One Big Union aimed to overthrow capitalism and the Canadian state and replace it with a socialist system based on worker control of industry and a democratic system with representation based on workplace instead of residential location. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Spartacist uprising in Germany, labour unions in Canada grew increasingly militant. The revolt commenced with the Vancouver general strike on 2 August 1918. The general strike was violently suppressed by the military, and union offices were ransacked. Victor Midgley, the leader of the strike, ...
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Aftermath Of World War I
The aftermath of World War I saw far-reaching and wide-ranging cultural, economic, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds. Additionally, culture in the nations involved was greatly changed. World War I also had the effect of bringing political transformation to most of the principal parties involved in the conflict, transforming them into Electoral democracy, electoral democracies by bringing near-universal suffrage for the first time in history, as in Weimar Republic, Germany (1919 German federal election), United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1918 United Kingdom general election), and the United States (1920 United States presidential election). Blockade of Germany Through the per ...
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Workers' Self-management
Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-managed economy, Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by Democratic socialism, democratic, Libertarian socialism, libertarian and Market socialism, market socialists as well as anarchists and communists. There are many variations of self-management. In some variants, all the worker-members manage the enterprise directly through assemblies while in other forms workers exercise management functions indirectly through the election of specialist managers. Self-management may include worker supervision and oversight of an organization by elected bodies, the election of specialized managers, or self-directed ma ...
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Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , ; ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosophy, Marxist philosopher, Linguistics, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, Political philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, and remained in prison until shortly before his death in 1937. During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His ''Prison Notebooks'' are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources—not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including the history of Italy and Italian nationalism, the French Rev ...
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Winnipeg General Strike
The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was one of the most famous and influential strikes in Canadian history. For six weeks, May 15 to June 26, more than 30,000 strikers brought economic activity to a standstill in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which at the time was Canada's third largest city. In the short term, the strike ended in arrests, bloodshed and defeat, but in the long run it contributed to the development of a stronger labour movement and the tradition of Social Democratic Party of Canada (in Manitoba), social democratic politics in Canada. Causes of the strike There were many background causes for the strike, most of them related to the prevailing social inequalities and the impoverished condition of the city's working class. Wages were low, prices were rising, employment was unstable, immigrants faced discrimination, housing and health conditions were poor. In addition, there was resentment of the enormous profits enjoyed by employers during the war. Soldiers returning from ...
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General Strike
A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions of political, social, and labour organizations and may also include rallies, marches, boycotts, civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, and other forms of direct or indirect action. Additionally, general strikes might exclude care workers, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses. Historically, the term general strike has referred primarily to solidarity action, which is a multi-sector strike that is organised by trade unions who strike together in order to force pressure on employers to begin negotiations or offer more favourable terms to the strikers; though not all strikers may have a material interest in each other's negotiations, they all have a material interest in maintaining and strengthening the collective efficacy of strikes as ...
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British Columbia Federation Of Labour
The British Columbia Federation of Labour (BCFED), often shortened to the BC Federation of Labour, is a central organization for organized labour in British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 1910 and has 500,000 members. History The BCFED was formed in 1910. In 1917, the BCFED adopted a resolution opposing Canada's recently passed Military Service Act, which mandated conscription for military age men. The BCFED published a newspaper, ''The B.C. Federationist''. The newspaper had a circulation of 40,000 workers throughout Western Canada and has been characterized as a revolutionary trade unionist publication. The paper was used to distribute socialist messaging, including '' "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder'' by Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state ...
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Trades And Labor Congress Of Canada
The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada was a Canada-wide central federation of trade unions from 1886 to 1956. It was founded at the initiative of the Toronto Trades and Labour Council and the Knights of Labor. It was the third attempt at a national labour federation to be formed in Canada: it succeeded the Canadian Labour Union which existed from 1873 to 1877 and the Canadian Labour Congress which held only one conference in 1881. The first meeting was called by the Toronto Trades Council and the Knights of Labor. It attracted mainly Toronto unionists with no one attending from outside of Ontario. It adopted policies which denounced government supported immigration, the Salvation Army for its alleged efforts to bring London’s poor to Canada; it opposed any Asian immigration, called for female factory inspectors to protect women workers, a single tax system, government only issued currency (Banks issued money at this time), the end of child labour, and the use of convict l ...
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Labour Movement
The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considered an instance of class conflict. * In trade unions, workers campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and fair treatment from their employers, and through the implementation of labour laws, from their governments. They do this through collective bargaining, sectoral bargaining, and when needed, strike action. In some countries, co-determination gives representatives of workers seats on the board of directors of their employers. * Political parties representing the interests of workers campaign for labour rights, social security Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with w ...
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Union Jack
The Union Jack or Union Flag is the ''de facto'' national flag of the United Kingdom. The Union Jack was also used as the official flag of several British colonies and dominions before they adopted their own national flags. It is sometimes asserted that the term ''Union Jack'' properly refers only to naval usage, but this assertion was dismissed by the Flag Institute in 2013 after historical investigations. The origins of the earlier flag of Great Britain date from 1606. James VI and I, King James VI of Scotland had inherited the English and Irish thrones in 1603 as James I, thereby Union of the Crowns, uniting the crowns of Kingdom of England, England, Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland, and Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland in a personal union, although Scotland and England remained separate states until the Treaty of Union took effect in 1707. On 12 April 1606, a new flag to represent the regal union between these two nations was specified in a royal decree, according to which the fla ...
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1918 Vancouver General Strike
The 1918 Vancouver general strike was a general strike that took place in response to the death of Albert "Ginger" Goodwin on 2 August 1918. It was the first general strike in the history of British Columbia and a pivotal event in the Canadian Labour Revolt, which would unfold over the following years. Background First World War In 1912, Canada experienced an economic depression, leading to mass unemployment, a decrease in the unionized workforce, and reduced wages for remaining workers. Wartime inflation caused real incomes to drop, particularly in 1917, and Vancouver shipbuilders experienced a labour shortage due to conscription. The war also brought difficulties for radicals. The government banned radical organizations, censored their press organs, and banned strikes and lockouts. However, many radicals were encouraged by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which they believed showed that a socialist revolution was possible in Canada. Anti-Conscription Movement By the outb ...
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Spartacist Uprising
The Spartacist uprising (German: ), also known as the January uprising () or, more rarely, Bloody Week, was an armed uprising that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the German Revolution of 1918–1919, German revolution that broke out just before the end of World War I. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the supporters of the provisional government led by Friedrich Ebert of the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), which favored a social democracy, and those who backed the position of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which wanted to set up a Soviet republic, council republic similar to the one established by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The government's forces were victorious in the fighting. The uprising began with mass demonstrations and strikes called by the parties of the radical left to protest the dismissal of Berlin's chief of police. Taken by sur ...
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