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Adam Fishwick University of Sussex [email protected]. Work, Political Ideas and Class Formation in the Chilean Textile Industry 1930-1973. Overview. Context: Beyond the Estado de Compromiso Workers’ Newspapers: A Note on Methodology Constructing Textile Workers - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Work, Political Ideas and Class Formation in the Chilean Textile Industry 1930-1973
Adam FishwickUniversity of Sussex
Overview• Context: Beyond the Estado de Compromiso
• Workers’ Newspapers: A Note on Methodology
• Constructing Textile Workers– Grievances from the Factory Floor– Interpreting Discontent– The ‘Anomaly’ of Chilean Socialism– Historical Memory
• The Working Class and Industrialisation in Chile
• Labour history in Chile
• ‘Heroic’ versus the institutionalised phases
• Limits on institutionalisation of working class struggle and persistence of autonomy
• Experience of work and the politicisation of grievances, ideas and everyday struggle
Beyond the Estado de Compromiso
Workers’ Newspapers: A Note on Methodology
• Representation or formation?
• Insights into the history of struggles and political moments in working class history
• Insights into the politicisation of workers and their interests
• Nexus of representing working class struggle and the contested meanings applied to it
Constructing Textile Workers
• Grievances from the Factory Floor
• Interpreting Discontent
• The ‘Anomaly’ of Chilean Socialism
• Historical Memory
• Beyond political/economic dichotomy
• Concerns over wages and work persistent
• 1930s target employer abuses in early formation of the industry
• 1940s/1950s shift towards concrete targeting government and foreign firms
• 1970s supportive of government and pushes for further reforms
Grievances from the Factory Floor
• Legalism and radicalism as interpreting grievances and relations with state and capital
• 1930s – 1950s sees shift in legalism from supportive of Labour Code to pressure for legal-institutional implementation
• 1970s strong contrast particularly stark between support for legal gains made in the state and radical factory occupations
Interpreting Discontent
• Anti-imperialism, nationalism and, democracy
• Anti-imperialism in the industry emerges in the 1940s and consolidated in 1970s
• Nationalism in a left-wing form supported national industrialists in the 1950s and nationalisation/socialisation in 1970s
• Democracy begins in 1930s with right to unionise, in 1950s against repression, and 1970s in conflicts over worker participation in production
The ‘Anomaly’ of Chilean Socialism
Historical Memory
• Explicit formative role of the workers’ press
• Applying political-theoretical ideas to struggles – Marx, Lenin etc.
• National political history – Recabarren, Nitrate Workers, Union History
• International political struggle – Franco, May Day, Soviet Union
Working Class Formationand Contested Industrialisation
• Shifting grievances reflecting changes in industry and political priorities
• Continuity of political interpretation
• Influence of political-ideological context
• Politicisation and construction of collective historical memory
• Persistence of radical conflict beyond and beneath the institutions of the working class