Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian Radical Movement 1899-1919

by A. Ross McCormack

The opening of the twentieth century saw a fervour of radical political movements in Western Canada. Ross McCormack explores the constituencies, ideologies, and development of early reformist, syndicalist, and socialist organizations from the 1880s up to the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. He distinguishes three types of radicals - reformers, rebels, and revolutionaries - who competed with each other to fashion a gneral western constituency. The reformers wanted to change society for the betterment of the workers, but both their aims and methods were moderate, essentially transfering the philosophy and tactics of the British labour movement to the Canadian west. The rebels, militant industrial unionists, periodically battled the Trades and Labour Congress in order to establish unions strong enough to defet the employers and, if necessary, the state. The revolutionary Marxists were committed to the destruction of industrial capitalism and the establishment of a society controlled by the workers. The book describes the origins of radicalism, traces the histories of the various organizations that expressed its ideals, and discusses the impact of the First World War on the labour movement. Using previously unexplored sources, McCromack has produced the first comprehensive examination of the early history of the radical movement in western Canada, adding an important dimension to our knowledge and understanding of Canadian labour history.

Genres: History

228 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1977

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 1 out of 5]

C-

The Unbearable Whiteness of Leftism

this book is not completely useless, there's a lot of interesting stuff in there about the radical movements of the early century. and there's some great petty factional socialist insults like "denouncing the SPC’s doctrines as a ‘dogmatic, arid, blighting creed of withering materialism."

however.
this book ignores any factors of gender, failing to mention the subject even once, how male radicals responded to the political demands of women or suffragettes, the existence of female radicals and their additional demands, or simply whether gender was a factor at all. similarly, there is zero attention paid to colonialism. for a book about the labour history of a colonial nation that achieves economic growth through primitive accumulation via the destruction of indigenous nations and territories, this is unforgivable. a book on labour history does not necessarily have to centre entirely on the subject, but to completely ignore colonialism's impact on the canadian labour movement leads one to assert things like McCormack, that the mere presence of East Asian workers made unionism impossible. to utterly ignore colonialism and its formations of white supremacy and the impact of this on the labour movement means McCormack fails to understand why or how racism was such a significant element of labour organizing in western Canada. his failure to understand this, coupled with his recognition of this racism's existence, leads to justification and excuses for this racism. McCormack doesn't see racism as a function of white supremacy or the colonial society, but a logical if unfortunate necessity of labour organizing between groups of different "cultures." next-level essentialising of culture and race means McCormack has difficult dealing with contradictions, simultaneously marvelling at the successful organization of new immigrant Eastern European workers or wobbly organization among immigrant groups while two pages later insisting that racist exclusion of East and South Asian workers from other labour movements was an inevitability due to differences in culture and language. what McCormack thinks made the fundamental difference between British workers and Eastern European workers transcendable while the differences between British and Asian workers unbridgeable is left to the reader, as he has no understanding or explanation of white supremacy's functioning.

this is not a book worth reading

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a copy of this book in the basement of the Edmonton Book Store which I thought was pretty cool. Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries is a book about a very specific moment in time, the left wing movement in Western Canada at the turn of the 20th century. I found the book extremely helpful. McCormack starts in the 1890s describing the boom of industrialization arriving in Western Canada and ends with the Winnipeg general strike of 1919.

The common thread between all left histories I have read is that leftists love to argue, split off, and denounce each other and the Canadian movement was no exception. The major splits were between what McCormack calls the gradualists and the impossiblists. The gradualists are the labourites, trade unionists, moderate socialists, in general the reformers. The impossiblists are made up of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC), Social Democratic Party (SDP), the International Workers of the World (IWW), in general the revolutionaries. Within the impossiblists the major split is between the SPC and the IWW. The SPC believed in political action and a vanguard of revolutionary intellectuals who would get elected and spread the truth to the workers. The IWW believed in economic action, in creating One Big Union, a militant industrial unionism or syndicalism to force change through general strikes.

Vancouver and Winnipeg were always the hotspots of radicalism and McCormack devotes a chapter entirely to Winnipeg. The last two chapters are on World War One and they are very interesting. The Canadian Left became the most radical during this period as Prime Minister Robert Borden introduced conscription and took away many civil liberties. In 1917, Borden was re-elected and the Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar in Russia and these two events inspired the radicals in a big way. The federal government sided with big business and the ruling class and banned the IWW and the SDP along with their press publications. The government also encouraged mobs and private goons to break up strikes and destroy union halls and printing presses. 1919 was the peak of radicalism in Canada and McCormack does a great job of explaining the lead up to it.

I dock the book one star because I found its analysis a bit lackluster. There is a short five page epilogue where McCormack unconvincingly states that the failure of the Winnipeg strike proved that radicalism can only fail and people are better off to side with gradualists, the labourites who chip away at gaining some immediate concessions. I guess that part is up to your own political opinion. But as a resource for this period of time I found this book invaluable, there is so much information packed into it that I don't think you will find anywhere else.