“Virile Syndicalism” in Comparative Perspective: A Gender Analysis of the IWW in the United States and Australia

Abstract

It is no coincidence that syndicalism emerges in a historical period when industrial discipline, economic efficiency, and social regularization are the guiding imperatives in the reconstruction of power and authority in the workplace. The syndicalist tendencies that mark the working-class response to this early twentieth-century effort at reconstituting workplace rules and regulations not only arise to combat capitalism but also to contest the respectable reformism of craft-based labor unions. “Syndicalism,” as Wayne Thorpe argues, “was simultaneously a contributing cause, a symptom, and a beneficiary of dissatisfaction with the dominant labor strategies of the period.”Wayne Thorpe, “The Workers Themselves”: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour, 1913–1923 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1989), 30. On the historical and in- ternational context for the emergence of syndicalism, see Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe, eds., Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective (Aldershot, England, 1990). Furthermore, as David Montgomery contends: “Revolutionary syndicalism extracted from the solidarities and ethical code of workers' daily lives a merciless critique of the existing structures of exploitation, power, and authority. It did not spare the institutions that workers had created for themselves.”David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (New York, 1987), 310.

“The Dirty Scruff”: Relief and the Production of the Unemployed in Depression‐era British Columbia

“…This individuation (in both senses) needs to be understood as an effort by the DND to reinstate normative masculine identities, which emphasised individualism and productivism. These characteristics, associated with particular norms of masculinity, were in contrast to what Francis Shor (1992, 1999) describes as working‐class, virile masculinities, emphasising physical strength and solidarity. The DND employed a classic anti‐union strategy in its attempts to individuate the men: the military dictated that a person could only “carry his complaint to a higher authority provided he acted individuall y” (DND 1937:8).…”

The construction of masculinity in the Spanish labour movement: Astudy of the Revista Blanca (1923–36)

“…As Nerea Aresti has remarked, it is only 'a través de categorías y herramientas lingüís-ticas [que] las condiciones materiales de existencia adquieren significado […]' (Aresti 2010: 20). The form of masculinity that the Revista Blanca gave voice to was not the virile masculinity present in syndicalist movements (Shor 1999), born out of the daily struggle of manual labour, but a type of masculinity constructed from different material conditions provided by the literary, sociological and journalistic endeavours of its authors within the framework of militant cultural anarchism.…”

Neo-liberal Evolution and Union Responses in Australia

“…Nevertheless, labourism was never hegemonic. The syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was active in Australia for a short period during and just after World War I (Burgmann 1995, Shor 1999. The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) then became an important force from the 1920s to the 1950s (O'Lincoln 1985;Macintyre 1998), in manufacturing, mining, transport and even education and clerical occupations (Sheridan 1989;Bramble 2008:8).…”