Preliminary Programme

In this paper we intend to study the ideology and the political militancy of the Lisbon tobacco workers.
This important part of the Portuguese working-class was particularly active in the socialist movement in the beginning of the 1870’s. Then they were integrated in the Fraternidade Operária (“Workers Fraternity”) an organization with links to the International. However there followed a period of disbelieve in the possibility of getting to the “Promised Land” of socialism through the strategy defined by their leaders.
However, socialism remained the unifying idiom of the tobacco workers. In general, this ideology as expressed by these workers can be identified with the possibilist current of the International, but it was somehow elaborated and adapted to the particular conditions of the Portuguese tobacco workers.
We will study this ideological construction through the articles published in the press, especially in the tobacco workers newspaper A Voz do Operário (“The Workers Voice”).
Another part of this paper is the analysis of how the political militancy of the tobacco workers. We want to understand whether there was a political expression to the socialist ideal, i.e., we want to find out what was the relationship between the tobacco workers and the parties that embodied the socialist ideal, be it the Socialist Party or the Communist Party.
In this part we will use lists of militants of the Socialist and Communist parties that include the names and professions of the members.
Whenever it’s possible we will compare with similar experiences in other countries. (Show less)

Even decades after the event, arguably no socialist or working-class movement anywhere in the world had so effective a device for arousing sentiment as did France in calling upon the legacy of the Paris Commune – the mostly working-class rebellion that controlled the city for three months in the spring of 1871 before being put down with great violence. But in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1905 – the largest rebellion in Europe to involve the working class since 1871 – what exactly did the legacy of the Commune stand for? The memory of the Commune had, by the turn-of-the-century, become politicized and ritualized, yet still served as an inspiration for the French left and for others across the world. But did the events of 1871 offer any genuine practical lessons for those striving to keep its memory alive or, as in the case of Russia, engaged in political struggle? Was the Commune the last spasm of a revolutionary tradition that began in 1789, or was it a sign of things to come, and in this sense a model for the history unfolding in Russia in 1905?
In the years before 1905, the French left responded ambiguously at best and more often with an implicit “no” to the premise that the Commune offered a model from which to draw practical examples. At the same time many labor leaders and organizations eagerly latched onto its inspirational legacy. This may have been a predictable development given the harshness with which the Commune was repressed and the evolutionary political direction taken by much of the political left during the fin de siècle. But at the same time, Lenin, who had a keen knowledge of the history of the Paris Commune, including the famous interpretations by Marx, accepted both the symbolic and functional legacies of the Commune, seeing in it the lessons that Marx had highlighted, as well as a blueprint for future actions. The emergence of “soviets” in Russia in 1905, and particularly the independence demonstrated by the Petersburg Soviet and the Moscow uprising of 1905, appeared to revitalize the idea that the history of 1871 still had practical lessons to offer. In time, the “meanings” of 1871 and 1905 would be joined to that of the October Revolution of 1917, with the Commune serving as a legitimating agent for the new Soviet regime. After 1921, the French Communist Party would adopt a Leninist interpretation, bringing together the Commune’s practical and inspirational legacies. The re-thinking of these years would produce a shift in the French revolutionary tradition away from its post-1871 emphasis upon defeat and uniqueness, to a new triumphalist model, still inspired by the older traditions, but now centered on the new Soviet example.
This paper draws upon primary sources from the IISH, along with several secondary sources to explore the evolving legacy of the Commune for the French left. (Show less)

Can worker-owned democratic businesses be viable economic institutions for an increasingly diverse workforce? The paper is an ethnographic study of a 30-year-old worker-owned cooperative that pays its 215 members well above industry standards while maintaining decentralized control and eschewing management. The organization, “One World Natural Grocery,” has also rejected its largely white, middle-class, educated roots and is now a widely diverse organization with a majority of working-class members. Against the literature claiming that decentralized democratic control requires member homogeneity and size limits that maintain face-to-face working relationships between all members, or else strictly representative structures to manage conflicting interests in a heterogeneous membership, this paper offers an analysis of how one organization retains participatory democratic control while growing and diversifying. The paper draws a strong connection between economic growth and its resulting stability, and the ability of the organization to recruit and retain its increasingly working-class and non-white membership. That such workplace heterogeneity and growth has not created crises of day-to-day or long-term cooperative control is explained by examining the organization’s densely clustered democratic processes. In exploring these specific mechanisms of direct democratic control in a larger workplace, this paper urges renewed scholarly attention to the potential of worker ownership and the value of direct democratic control. (Show less)