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In the past decade Canadian history has become a hotly contested subject. Iconic figures, notably Sir John A. Macdonald, are no longer unquestioned nation-builders. The narrative of two founding peoples has been set aside in favour of recognition of Indigenous nations whose lands were taken up by the incoming settlers. An authoritative and widely-respected Truth and Reconciliation Commission, together with an honoured Chief Justice of the Supreme Court have both described long-standing government policies and practices as "cultural genocide." Historians have researched and published a wide range of new research documenting the many complex threads comprising the Canadian experience. As a leading historian of labour and social movements, Bryan Palmer has been a major contributor to this literature. In this first volume of a major new survey history of Canada, he offers a narrative which is based on the recent and often specialized research and writing of his historian colleagues. One major theme in this book is the colonial practices of the authorities as they pushed aside the original peoples of this country. While the methods varied, the result was opening up Canada's rich resources for exploitation by the incoming European settlers. The second major theme is the role of capitalism in determining how those resources were exploited, and who would reap the enormous power and wealth that accrued. The first volume of this challenging and illuminating new survey history covers the period that concludes in the 1890s after the creation out of Britain's northern colonies of the semi-autonomous federal Canadian state. ----------------------- Capitalism and Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890–1960 continues the examination of our nation’s past through a new lens, incorporating the scholarship of Canadian historians to portray a richly endowed and wealthy but very unequal first-world country. This second volume of Bryan Palmer’s history of Canada covers 1890 to 1960. Weaving together themes that include business, labour, politics, and social history, this account brings the experiences of Indigenous peoples into the centre of the narrative. Canada experienced extraordinary growth during these decades, notably after the Second World War when many Canadians quickly became far better off Yet vast inequalities persisted, Indigenous peoples experienced ongoing and often worsening deprivation, and ordinary people saw little or no real improvement in their lives. These realities set the stage for the interplay of reform, resistance and reaction that followed after 1960. Palmer examines the continuing role of capitalism and colonialism in structuring Canada in the period between 1890 and 1960 from capital’s conflicts and fragile ententes with labour, to the struggles of Indigenous Peoples and francophone Canada, and the changing role of Canadian capital internationally. Relying on the work of scholars who have produced a vast academic literature on a wide range of topics in Canadian history, Bryan Palmer offers a new history of Canada which reflects the knowledge and values of 21st-century Canadians. -- Publisher's description

As Canadian workers, the labour movement, and scholars confront a new millennium, new opportunities and new challenges loom large. This volume, which mirrors Labour/Le Travail Volume 46, commissions a number of articles addressing themes that will be of consequence as we enter the 21st century. The articles that appear in this collection are authored by some of the more prominent social scientists working in the field of labour-related studies, among them Desmond Morton, Ian McKay, Joan Sangster, Cynthia Comacchio, David Frank, and Jacques Rouillard. Their writing appears in the book, grouped in a series of thematic sections: institutions and ideas; gender, sexuality and family; Quebec and the national question; culture; and workers and the state. Topics such as Canadian socialism, pivotal events such as the 1949 Asbestos strike, and important cultural undertakings, such as working-class representations on film and video, are addressed. Historiographical controversies and debates associated with the relations of women’s and working-class histories or different generational styles associated with the presentation of labour’s past are surveyed. This is an issue all interested in Canadian society and its development will not want to miss. --Publisher's description

Hard Work: The Making of Labor History, by Melvyn Dubofsky, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-1935," by Randi Storch.

The article reviews the book, "The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945-1971," by José E. Igartua.

The article reviews the book, "Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman," by Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich.

The article reviews the book, "Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism," by Erik S. McDuffie.

The article reviews the books "Global Capitalism in Crisis: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System" by Murray E.G. Smith, "In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives" by Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch, and "The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development" by Michael A. Lebowitz.

The article reviews the book, "Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History" by Marcel van der Linden.

The article reviews the book, "The Sweetest Dream: Love, Lies, & Assassination," by Lillian Pollak.

The article reviews the book, "Dog Days: James P. Cannon vs. Max Shachtman in the Communist League of America, 1931-1933," by Prometheus Research Library Staff.

The introduction discusses the 50th anniversary volume of Labour/Le Travail and explains the journal's ongoing efforts to cover the labour studies field.

This paper commences with a suggestion that “the British Marxists” may well be a more diverse group than has generally been recognized. It concerns itself with the formation of the first British New Left in the1950s. The content of the E.P. Thompson and John Saville edited journal, The New Reasoner is examined, with attention paid to the publication’s internationalism, its use of critical social science, the accent placed on culture, and the stress on organization. To the extent that The New Reasoner failed in its in tended aim of building and sustaining a New Left, the paper closes with some suggestions about the implications of this failure, especially as it related to E.P. Thompson’s historiographical contributions, in which the influence of The Making of the English Working Class (London 1963) loomed large.

The study of he working class and commitment to its causes is central to what this journal is about. Three men who made significant contributions to working class life over the course of the last century, but whose personal efforts, sadly and to our collective loss, came to an end in the year 2000, merit our attention. Marcel Pepin, a vibrant voice in the modern history of Quebec's union movement and former leader of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CNTU/CSN), died 6 March 2000. ...On 15 June 2000 another advocate of Canadian workers, especially those incarcerated in homelessness and poverty, Norman N. Feltes, died. ...Jack Scott was a revolutionary of the 20th century who had hope for the 21st. He no doubt understood, however, that others would be making history in the new millennium, and his contributions had already been made. He died as the century closed, on 30 December 2000.

The article pays homage to the life and work of Jack Scott.

The article reviews and comments on "Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s: A Memoir," volumes 1 and 2, by Ernest Tate.

The article reviews the book, "Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution since the Age of FDR," by Donna T. Haverty-Stacke.

This essay is an attempt to outline recent trends in the criminalization of working-class lives. It casts the net broadly, both historically and geographically, situating capitalist austerity's recent turn to mass incarceration in the United States and Canada in early 19th-century poor law sensibilities. What is happening now differs from the workhouse regime of industrial capitalism's new poor law, of course, but it has undoubted connections to this older regime of regulation. The new new poor law of our times is part of a long history of how dispossession has been pivotal to capitalism's project of uninhibited accumulation and suppression of those driven to defiance and dissent. It reveals how, as profit declines in the productive sphere, incarceration itself can be made to pay. The new new poor law is fundamental to contemporary capitalist political economy as the politics of austerity, the dismantling of the welfare state, and an assault on working-class entitlements and trade unionism are complemented by the rise of a prison-industrial complex. Driven by class antagonisms and racialized scapegoating, the new new poor law inevitably draws into its sphere of influence public-sector workers employed in the criminal justice system. It also unleashes intensified grievances of the incarcerated, stimulating the birth of movements of protest in which prisoners and proletarians search out ways of making common cause.

The article reviews the book, "Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956," edited by Evan Smith and Matthew Worley.

The article reviews the book, "Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties," by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener.