Abstract
Robert Ovetz has written an ambitious and timely discussion about how labor and management organize and re-organize in their approach to workers and in response to changing work processes and economic structures. When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflicts from 1877 to 1921 first explores “both the tactics and strategies workers use to self-organise in order to recompose working-class power in light of the existing composition of capital. Second, [the book] examines how capital designs its tactics and strategies in response in order to restore its class power” (3).
This book emphasizes constant changes in workplace organization and class composition, focusing on the period of 1877, with the national railroad strike, to 1921, when “the redneck army” was involved in the West Virginia mine war and tried to “launch their own armed insurrection” (485). In between, Ovetz provides extensive discussions of multiple events, including: the railroad strike of 1894; the 1905-1910 campaign against US Steel by the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers; the wildcat strikes during World War I when, for the first time, “the federal government authorized pervasive policies to govern working conditions in American industries,”(370); and the Seattle general strike of 1919, a “social insurgency” when workers “used their power to shut down the economy of an entire local geographic area” (456-47). With a 20-page bibliography, there is no shortage of sources, despite Ovetz’s complaint about “the excessive teaching load of a part-time adjunct professor at three to five institutions” (117).
More than a labor history, this book reflects Ovetz’s determination “to explore the relationship between tactical violence and the relations of power in terms of both the economy and the character of the state” (28). To that end, he emphasizes a unique aspect of this historical period, as workers and bosses used literal weapons as part of their campaigns. He describes the succession of strikes and violence both by the workers who armed themselves and by “the elites” who called in military forces, as well as armed private security companies like Baldwin-Felts. Ovetz explains, “Violence is but one of the tactics available in insurgents’ repertoire, deployed in particular existing political conditions and class composition in order to realize their strategy and achieve their objectives” (484).
The book is especially timely as millions of workers—both union and unorganized—are reorganizing to deal with the drastic conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic and their quickly changing workplaces. After all, When Workers Shot Back is about organizing, a history that Ovetz notes in important because “[t]actics are rarely chosen by present conditions alone, but informed by previous use of repression by elites; by available political space to present grievances or co-opt insurgent leadership; and by broken negotiations and unenforced prior settlements” (486).
While describing the class conflicts from 1877 to 1921, Ovetz states, “Workers’ power is a factor of their ability to organize themselves, form alliances with other workers both inside and outside their immediate shop, industry sector, and even region, and build mass support in the community” (125). This statement certainly applies as strongly in 2021 as it did hundred years ago.