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This thesis traces the transformations in state, class, and politics in British North America from 1760-1860, and how these facilitated the emergence of wider economic change. Building on recent studies in political economy, Marxist and economic history, as well as historical sociology, it employs a class power model of historical change to explain how and why colonial Canada's political economy developed. The argument also draws upon comparative political economy to highlight how different class structures and different forms of political institutionalization shaped political economic regimes and long-run forms of economic growth. The case study analysis of British North America within a wider comparative context demonstrates that class interests, institutions, and policy making were critical to state building and changes in state-society relations, above all to state 'autonomy' and class 'embeddedness'. Agrarians and commercial classes struggled over economic benefits and the reins of political power. But how these classes forged coalitions and how their conflicts were institutionalized within the state determined whether or not new productive dynamics emerged. By the mid-19th century, with greater autonomy, colonial governments across the North American colonies designed institutions, laws, and policies to improve taxation, build infrastructures, enhance the rule of law, and extend the contractual equalities necessary to commercialize the economy. With greater class embeddedness, broader class coalitions of agrarians and merchants actively reshaped agrarian property and agricultural labour to conform to the structures of a market economy, and enacted new market law to allow for the expansion of free labour markets, trade, commerce, and small manufacturing. Looked at comparatively, the thesis claims, 19th century colonial British North America emerged as a 'Liberal Settler' society, led by a diverse coalition of agrarians and merchants. Despite its many state and class particularities, this crystallization of settlers, merchants, and Imperial market-directed politics made colonial Canada a variant of Britain's own liberal political economy, and very similar to other growing settler countries such as the United States. Exploring the connections between state, class, and politics, the thesis concludes, can tell us much about why and how these distinct historical patterns emerged, and why 19th century political economies changed in ways that fostered the development of capitalism.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, symbolically ending the Cold War, few imagined that the resulting shockwaves that toppled the Soviet Union would also reach a perpetually dark and quiet microfilm reading room on the third floor of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. But this is what occurred. The disintegration of the Communist order in Russia loosened rigid Soviet control of state archives and made available to Western researchers material which had been inaccessible for the length of the Cold War. This included tens of thousands of documents pertaining to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War—foreign volunteers, including roughly 1,600 Canadians, who had been recruited and sent to Spain by the Communist International to fight a fascist rebellion lead by General Francisco Franco. ...In 1993 and 1994, George Bolotenko, an archivist at Library and Archives Canada, visited the Centre for the Preservation and Study of Records of Contemporary History in Moscow, also known as the Comintern Archives, to purchase microfilmed copies of some 10,000 pages of documents on Canadians in the International Brigades. Although the impact of this material on historical scholarship has thus far been light, it has the potential to irrevocably change scholarship on Canadians in the Spanish Civil War. --Author's introduction

Walking the Union Walk: Stories from CEP’s First Ten Years, by Jamie Swift, is reviewed.

While the relationships between intellectual research and political commitment, and indeed political engagement, have been identified amongst social, labour, and Marxist historians, such as the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Historians’ Group, there are few, if any, examinations of the rhetorical and communications process by which such public intellectual activity is made: i.e., the “how” of political interventions. This paper addresses this important area in examining the means by which [Eric] Hobsbawm was able to intervene effectively in public debates, having a direct impact on the Labour Party’s future trajectory. Hobsbawm exercised considerable influence in the highly public political infighting within the Labour Party [i.e., Old Left and New Labour], even though he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and he was able to effect changes through his contributions to debates which affected both political parties simultaneously. --From author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "The Red Man's on the Warpath: The Image of the "Indian" and the Second World War," by R. Scott Sheffield.

The article reviews the book, "Money in Their Own Name: The Feminist Voice in Poverty Debate in Canada, 1970-1995," by Wendy McKeen.

Newfoundland fisheries have been transformed from an industry once dominated by petty commodity production and merchant-fisher relations to one dominated by private enterprise and corporate capitalism. State efforts to enclose the fisheries through boat quotas and to limit participation through a core classification system demonstrate a shift in values. Science-based regulation, in which the estimates of fisheries scientists were overly optimistic, led to the collapse of the cod fishery. The recent turn to a fishery based on classical economics, emphasizing professionalization, has left inshore fishers caught between two value systems. The traditional view valorizes hard work and local knowledge about the fishing environment; the modern view embraces technology, rationalization and professionalization. In [this book] Nicole Power examines, through a feminist lens, how this tension between two views — between a way of life and a way to make a living — and how these changes have affected men (and women) in the Bonavista and Trinity Bays inshore fishery. Has a "crisis of fish" and the loss or diminution of livelihood led to a "crisis of masculinity"? Through extensive interviews with fishers and fish-plant workers, the author discovers that men have responded to restructuring in complex ways that are mediated, enabled and constrained by their class and gender positions, and by maritime cultural values and practices. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War against Iraq," by Paul Rutherford.

The article reviews the book, "Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said," by David Barsamian and Edward W. Said.

A Troublemaker's Handbook 2: How To Fight Back Where You Work - And WIN!, by Jane Slaughter, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Jewish Radicalism in Winnipeg, 1905-1960," edited by Daniel Stone.

The article reviews the book, "From the Lower East Side to Hollywood: Jews in American Popular Culture," by Paul Buhle.

Using union, government, and company records, as well as interviews, this article explores the origins of one of the most notorious industrial disasters in Canadian history - the deaths from industrial disease of some two hundred fluorspar miners on the south coast of Newfoundland. It explores the social, economic, and political forces that shaped the hazards they believed were destroying their health and the response of industry and the state to those efforts. Central to the account is a series of strikes that took place during 1941 and the actions of a government tribunal appointed to settle the dispute. Setting events at St. Lawrence in the context of some of the theoretical and methodological considerations intrinsic to the study of occupational health as a labor relations issue, this article not only adds to the knowledge of the forces that shaped this particular disaster but also represents a contribution to a neglected area of Canadian labor and working-class history.

[E]xamines the institution of work from the perspective of alienated labour, a perspective that many conventional approaches to the subject have ignored or misrepresented. Completely updated to reflect current trends in the labour force and research in the field of labour studies, The Tyranny of Work begins with a thorough discussion of work as a social problem and the sources of alienation. The book then examines the development of industrial capitalism in Canada, the white-collar and blue-collar worlds, and, finally, solutions to the problem of alienated labour. All statistics and data have been updated to reflect the most current research. Information from the 2001 Census has been integrated throughout the text. The Tyranny of Work examines the institution of work from the perspective of alienated labour, a perspective that many conventional approaches to the subject have ignored or misrepresented. --Publisher's description

The book Unfair advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards, by Lance Compa, is reviewed.

This thesis explores the nature and challenges of democracy within unions through an historical examination of the emergence and early years of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Formed by a merger of two pre-existing unions in 1963, CUPE casts new light on the Marxist, Michelsian and Institutionalist theoretical approaches to union democracy. The thesis calls into question the narrow and ahistorical link made between centralization, oligarchy and effectiveness on the one hand, and decentralization, democracy and ineffectiveness on the other. Instead, the case of CUPE shows that unions are subject to contradictory pressures and that neither centralization nor decentralization is inherently more democratic. Union democracy is part of an historical process of class formation, in which both union purposes and the boundaries of the democratic community (which can make legitimate claims on members' solidarity and self-discipline) are struggled over. As such, it is possible that decentralizing forces can place narrow and sectionalist priorities over the interests of the broader community. Moreover, the thesis argues that the use of merger as a method of forging greater class unity is itself problematic. The merger which created CUPE involved a protracted struggle over which model of union would prevail. The compromise which was reached entrenched a self-reinforcing cycle of autonomy-seeking by union locals which, over the long term, prevented the development of an effective national union capable of carrying out the democratic will of the membership as a whole. As such, through an historical excavation of the roots of contemporary crises in CUPE, the thesis points to the important way in which the outcomes of past decisions come to structure future political possibilities for unions and other social justice organizations.

Many social theorists (Goldthorpe, Lipset, Giddens, Hout, Brooks and Manza) have portrayed members of the Western industrial working-class as accommodative and resistant to a class-based social revolution. They suggest that an affluent proletariat has seen its oppositional class-consciousness subverted and transformed by the 'cash nexus' into various forms of social integration. With reference to Mann's (1973) measures of class-consciousness typologies and Livingstone and Mangan's (1996) study of Hamilton steelworkers, I explore expressions of working-class consciousness among organized workers at one of Canada's largest industrial union locals, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 222 at General Motors, in Oshawa, Canada. I accomplish this via an examination of the existence and degree of working-class imagery, class identity, and oppositional working-class consciousness among this group of workers on the basis of measured responses to a survey questionnaire (N=102), in-depth interviews, and participant observation. My thesis asserts that Oshawa autoworkers' material advantage is insufficient to transform their proletarian consciousness. I have found that among Oshawa autoworkers there is a shared view of Canadian society as class-based, a clear working-class self-identification and measurable forms of oppositional working-class consciousness.

The article reviews the book, "No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs, by Andrew Ross.

The article reviews the book, "Mapping the Margins: The Family and Social Discipline in Canada, 1700-1975," edited by Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau,