Table of contents LETTER FROM THE EDITOR .......................................................................... 5 DOSSIER: STRIKES AND REVOLUTION .......................................................... 6 THE PARTY AS VANGUARD: THE ROLE OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN STRIKES IN ST. PETERSBURG, 1912–14 Alice K. Pate ................................................................................................. 6 THE PREREVOLUTIONARY STRIKE MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA, 1912-1916 Kevin Murphy ..............................................................................................19 WORKERS’ STRIKES IN THE PARIS REGION IN 1968: CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES. Michael Seidman .........................................................................................39 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MASS STRIKE DURING THE GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918-1919 William A. Pelz ............................................................................................56 WHEN THE CACTUS BLOOMS: A CENTURY OF STRIKES IN MEXICO Richard Roman and Edur Velasco ...............................................................66 PRE-EMPTING NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, PIONEERING SOCIAL- MOVEMENT UNIONISM: AUSTRALIAN BUILDERS LABOURERS IN THE 1970S Verity Burgmann and Meredith Burgmann ..................................................93 THE GREEK TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN CONTROVERSY: AGAINST A STATE-CENTRED APPROACH TO LABOUR MOVEMENT THEORY Anna Koumandaraki .................................................................................. 117 ABSTRACTS ............................................................................................... 133 OUR AUTHORS ........................................................................................... 137 Editorial Board Alvaro Bianchi Andréia Galvão Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, UNICAMP UNICAMP (Campinas, Brazil) (Campinas, Brazil) Marcel van der Linden Raquel Varela International Institute of Social History Instituto de História Contemporânea, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) Serge Wolikow Sjaak van der Velden Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Independent researcher Université de Bourgogne (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) (Dijon, France) Xavier Domènech Sampere Centre d'Estudis sobre les Èpoques Franquista i Democràtica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) Executive Editor António Simões do Paço Instituto de História Contemporânea Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) Contact [email protected] Website http://workeroftheworldjournal.net/ Workers of the World is the journal of the International Association Strikes and Social Conflicts, born of the International Conference Strikes and Social Conflicts, held in Lisbon, UNL, on 16-20 March 2011. The Association now has the participation of more than two dozen academic institutions from Europe, Africa, North and South America. Website: http://iassc-mshdijon.in2p3.fr/ Advisory Board Andrea Komlosy Universität Wien (Austria) Angelo D’Orsi Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) Anita Chan University of Technology, Sydney (Australia) Antony Todorov New Bulgarian University, Sofia (Bulgaria) Armando Boito UNICAMP (Campinas, Brazil) Asef Bayat University Urbana-Champaign (Illinois, USA) Asli Odman Independent researcher (Turkey) Babacar Fall University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (Senegal) Beverly Silver Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) Bryan Palmer Trent University (Peterborough, Ontário, Canada) Christian DeVito Honorary Fellow, IISH, Amsterdam Claire Cerruti University of Johannesburg (South Africa) Cristina Borderias Universitat de Barcelona (Spain) Deborah Bernstein Haifa University (Israel) Elizabeth Faue Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan, USA) Fernando Rosas Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) François Jarrige Université de Bourgogne (France) Jean Vigreux Université de Besançon (France) Javier Tébar Universidad Rovira i Virgili (Spain) John Kelly Birkbeck College, University of London (UK) Kevin Murphy University of Massachusetts (Boston, USA) Manuel Peréz Ledesma Universidad Autonoma Madrid (Spain) Marcelo Badaró Matos Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil) Martí Marin Universidad Autonoma Barcelona (Spain) Michael Hall UNICAMP (Campinas, Brazil) Michael Seidman University of North Carolina Wilmington (USA) Mirta Lobato Universidad Buenos Aires (Argentina) Nitin Varma Humboldt Universität, Berlin (Germany) Nicole Mayer-Ahuja Universität Göttingen (Germany) Nicolás Iñigo Carrera PIMSA (Argentina) Paula Godinho Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) Peter Birke Koordinierender Redakteur von sozial.geschichte online Procopis Papastratis Pantheion University (Athens, Greece) Ratna Saptari Leiden University, (Netherlands) Ricardo Antunes UNICAMP (Campinas, Brazil) Ruben Vega Universidad Oviedo (Spain) Ruy Braga Universidade São Paulo (Brazil) Silke Neunsinger Arbark (Sweden) Verity Burgmann University of Melbourne (Australia) Wendy Goldman Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) Xavier Vigna Université de Bourgogne, France Letter from the editor his is the first issue of Workers of the World - International Journal on T Strikes and Social Conflicts. Workers of the World is the journal of the International Association Strikes and Social Conflicts, born of the International Conference Strikes and Social Conflicts, held in Lisbon, UNL, on 16-20 March 2011. The Association has already the participation of more than two dozen academic institutions from Europe, Africa, North and South America. Workers of the World is an academic journal with peer review published in English, for which original manuscripts may be submitted in Spanish, French, English, Italian and Portuguese. It publishes original articles, interviews and book reviews in the field of labour history and social conflicts in an interdisciplinary, global, long term historical and non Eurocentric perspective. In this first issue we have a dossier on Strikes and Revolution, with articles by Alice K. Pate, Kevin Murphy, Michael Seidman and William A. Pelz. We also have articles by Richard Roman and Edur Velasco on a century of strikes in Mexico, Verity Burgmann and Meredith Burgmann on the Australian builders labourers in the 1970s and Anna Koumandaraki on the controversy in the Greek trade union movement over a state-centred approach to labour movement theory. Workers of the World welcomes articles about crisis, working classes, internationalism, unions, organization, peasants, women, memory, propaganda and media, methodology, theory, protest, strikes, slavery, comparative studies, statistics, revolutions, cultures of resistance, race, among other subjects. Articles should be sent, according to the Editorial and publishing rules that you may find in our site (http://workeroftheworldjournal.net/), to the executive editor at [email protected]. We also invite you to visit the site of the International Association Strikes and Social Conflicts at http://iassc-mshdijon.in2p3.fr/. Welcome to Workers of the World! António Simões do Paço Executive Editor DOSSIER: STRIKES AND REVOLUTION The Party as Vanguard: The Role of the Russian Social Democratic Party in Strikes in St. Petersburg, 1912–1914 Alice K. Pate ussian revolutionaries reading Marx looked in vain for a comprehensive R organizational and tactical framework for political parties. The theoretician Plekhanov, who adapted Marx to Russian socialism, relied upon the definition of the Party found in the Communist Manifesto: Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working–class parties [...] (they are) the most advanced and resolute section of the working–class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others [...] they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.1 Marx offered both a broad and narrow definition of the term party. Marx and Engels also required the party to "support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things." Marx 1 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Collected Works, vol. 6 Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 497. warned workers they should prepare for revolution by "taking up their position as an independent party [...] and by not allowing themselves to be misled for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie."2 From Marx, the party member acquires a dual identity as a conscious guiding party leader and an observer who follows objective reality. In addition to problems of revolutionary identity, if the Communists are to be the most politically conscious and most organized part of the mass workers' party, parties such as those envisioned by Marx had to exist. But, what would be the nature of such parties in Russia? Furthermore, what, according to Marx, is the role of the conscious revolutionary in developing political consciousness? Russian Social Democrats (SDs) carried out a prolonged theoretical debate on these issues in exile outside of Russia that had little to do with Russian realities. This changed after the 1905 Revolution. Legal societies became possible in 1906 and party activists embraced the new opportunities available to organize clubs, unions, libraries and educational societies with workers, especially in St. Petersburg. The Russian labor movement refused to align itself with either the Menshevik or Bolshevik wing of the