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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 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.

A eulogy is provided for the Canadian labour leader and social activist Madeleine Parent.

Introduces articles in the issue including on the Knights of Labor in Quebec, a 1913 protest by Jewish students against antisemitic remarks at Aberdeen School in Montreal, and a tribute to the labour activist and organizer, Madeleine Parent.

Argues in this concluding commentary that the Harper Conservatives have captured the political imagination, while those in opposition have not. Discusses the ideological turn to global neoliberalism, including in Canada, since 1975, as advocated by economist Milton Friedman; in this context, the Harper Conservatives are simply a leaner and meaner version of the trend. Takes note of the contested perspectives on the state and community. Points to social movements, such as the student movement in Quebec, that have attempted to push back. Concludes that the New Right must be challenged by a coherent left politics that is beyond the current party system.

The editor announces his retirement and reflects on his longstanding connection with the journal, first as a contributor, then as editor. Expresses appreciation for the work and support of others. Welcomes members of the Canadian Association of Work and Labour Studies to the editorial board as well as incoming editor Sean Cadigan.

At the current conjuncture, histories of Canadian Communism seem analytically stalled in a fruitless (if inadequately addressed) historiographic impasse, ordered by oppositions: Moscow domination vs. local autonomy; authoritarianism vs. the pursuit of social justice. We need to confront these experiences, not as dichotomies, but as related phenomena, developing our histories of Communism around more totalizing appreciations that encompass both sides of a seemingly divided logic of classification. Having myself tried to see beyond the limiting oppositions of the extant historiography, I will explore how certain historians seem unwilling to look past the conveniently counter-posed analyses of two existing schools of thought, labelled traditionalists/revisionists in the United States and essentialists/realists in the United Kingdom. As distortions of my own writing suggest, we have reached a point where it is both appropriate and necessary to be more rigorous and fair-minded in our characterization of the historiography. --Introduction

Rebellious youth, the Cold War, New Left radicalism, Pierre Trudeau, Red Power, Quebec's call for Revolution, Marshall McLuhan: these are just some of the major forces and figures that come to mind at the slightest mention of the 1960s in Canada. Focusing on the major movements and personalities of the time, as well as the lasting influence of the period, Canada's 1960s examines the legacy of this rebellious decade's impact on contemporary notions of Canadian identity. Bryan D. Palmer demonstrates how after massive postwar immigration, new political movements, and at times violent protest, Canada could no longer be viewed in the old ways. National identity, long rooted in notions of Canada as a white settler Dominion of the North, marked profoundly by its origins as part of the British Empire, had become unsettled. Concerned with how Canadians entered the Sixties relatively secure in their national identities, Palmer explores the forces that contributed to the post-1970 uncertainty about what it is to be Canadian. Tracing the significance of dissent and upheaval among youth, trade unionists, university students, Native peoples, and Quebecois, Palmer shows how the Sixties ended the entrenched, nineteenth-century notions of Canada. The irony of this rebellious era, however, was that while it promised so much in the way of change, it failed to provide a new understanding of Canadian national identity. A compelling and highly accessible work of interpretive history, Canada's 1960s is the book of the decade about an era many regard as the most turbulent and significant since the years of the Great Depression and World War II. --Publisher's description

The Canadian worker has been a neglected figure in Canadian history. Workers have contributed in many ways to the development of Canadian society, but the history of working people — their families, communities and work places — has only gradually become part of our view of the past and an important component of understanding how we came to occupy our present. --Introduction. Contents: Early historiography -- Postwar scholarship -- 1970s-1980s -- Class and labour -- Scholarship proliferates -- New interpretation and debate -- Working women and gendered class relations -- Labour history at the current juncture.

What constitutes proletarianization? The conventional answer to this seemingly simple question often stresses waged labour. Yet many workers, past and present, are routinely unable,to secure paid employment, in part because of the persistence of capitalist crises of various kinds. This study of indigent workers in Toronto from the 1830s to the 1930s is premised on an understanding of proletarianization as dispossession, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the ways in which capitalism necessarily produces recurrent crises, leaving many workers wageless. It addresses how wagelessness and poverty were criminalized through the development of institutions of ostensible charitable relief, such as the Toronto House of Industry, in which those seeking shelter and/or sustenance were required to chop wood or, more onerously, break stone in order to be. admitted to the ranks of those 'deserving' of such support. By the end of the nineteenth century-resistance to such "labour tests" was increasingly evident. Protests took place in Toronto, where the black flag was carried in demonstrations demanding "work or bread." Refusing to "crack the stone" and demands that relief be administered differently were common features of mobilizations of the wageless in the opening decades of the twentieth century, in which socialists often took the lead. By the time of capitalism's devastating collapse in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Toronto's wageless were well situated to mount an outcasts' offensive.

Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how the homeless, the unemployed, and the destitute have struggled to survive and secure food and shelter in the wake of the many panics, downturns, recessions, and depressions that punctuate the years from the 1830s to the present. Written by a historian of the working-class and a poor people’s activist, this is a rebellious book that links past and present in an almost two-hundred year story of struggle and resistance. It is about men, women, and children relegated to lives of desperation by an uncaring system, and how they have refused to be defeated. In that refusal, and in winning better conditions for themselves, Toronto’s poor create the possibility of a new kind of society, one ordered not by acquisition and individual advance, but by appreciations of collective rights and responsibilities. --Publisher's description

Announces Sean Cadigan's resignation as editor. Bryan Palmer and Gregory Kealey to be interim co-editors until a new appointment is made. Takes note of the Canadian Labour Studies database, an open access bibliography of labour studies resources produced by Laurentian University librarians Desmond Maley and Dan Scott.

A survey of the global trajectory of labour history. Specially commissioned essays by labour historians of international repute consider: early labour history traditions, new conceptions of class, gender, ethnicity, culture, community and power. Whether the 1960s can be regarded as turning point in labour history the general historiographical climate in the mid-twentieth century the institutional context (e.g. the evolution of labour history societies, historical associations and journals) links between labour history and the labour movement Many authors are connected with the British Society for the Study of Labour History; all are experts in the labour history of particular countries. They analyse key debates, question dominant paradigms, acknowledge minority critiques and consider future directions. --Publisher's description.

Provides an illustrated overview of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and its significance today for working-class organizations and socialism. Contents: Introduction: Revisiting the workers' revolt in Winnipeg / Sean Carleton and Julia Smith (p. 23) -- 1919: Recovering a a legacy / Bryan D. Palmer (pp. 24 - 31, 40) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/1919-recovering-a-legacy] -- 1919: A graphic history of the Winnipeg General Strike [reproduction of the cover and illustrations from the book by the Graphic History Collective and David Lester] (pp. 32, 36-37) --  Red flags: Reflections on racism and radicalism / Owen Yoews (pp. 33-35, 40) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/red-flags-reflections-on-racism-and-radicalism] -- From 1919 to the fight for $15: Working-class organizing in Winnipeg today / Emily Leedham (pp. 38-30) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/from-1919-to-the-fight-for-15-working-class-organizing-in-winnipeg-today].