Claiming the City:A Global History of Workers' Fight for Municipal Socialism

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880 pages / February 2023 / 9781839767777

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Winner of the International Labor History Association (ILHA) 2023 Book of the Year Award for labor history

How workers fought for municipal socialism to make cities around the globe livable and democratic - and what the lessons are for today

For more than a century, municipal socialism has fired the imaginations of workers fighting to make cities livable and democratic. At every turn propertied elites challenged their right to govern.

Prominent US labor historian, Shelton Stromquist, offers the first global account of the origins of this new trans-local socialist politics. He explains how and why cities after 1890 became crucibles for municipal socialism. Drawing on the colorful stories of local activists and their social-democratic movements in cities as diverse as Broken Hill, Christchurch, Malmö, Bradford, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Hamilton, OH, the book shows how this new urban politics arose.

Long governed by propertied elites, cities in the nineteenth century were transformed by mass migration and industrialization that tore apart their physical and social fabric. Amidst massive strikes and faced with epidemic disease, fouled streets, unsafe water, decrepit housing, and with little economic security and few public amenities, urban workers invented a local politics that promised to democratize cities they might themselves govern and reclaim the wealth they created. This new politics challenged the class power of urban elites as well as the centralizing tendencies of national social-democratic movements. Municipal socialist ideas have continued to inspire activists in their fight for the right of cities to govern themselves.

Reviews

The culmination of Stromquist's lifetime of impressive scholarship on rank-and-file workers and socialist movements, Claiming the City? arrives right on time as we explore the possibilities of transformation at the municipal scale. Astonishingly sweeping in its range of fine-grained case studies, the book teems with comparative insights while it traces transnational connections established by a mobile working class and internationalist commitments.

David Roediger teaches American Studies at University of Kansas. His books include The Sinking Middle Class?

I'm sure that Shelton Stromquist's monumental book will have a lasting impact. It is an inspiring work by a historian of great stature on a very important, but much neglected, topic; it will certainly resonate throughout discussions of history and socialist politics.

Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History

This magisterial account of socialist and labor activism at the local level sweeps ambitiously across Europe, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Shelton Stromquist eloquently unearths a global movement of "internationalism from below" that transformed cities and, as well, reshaped national and global. politics. Claiming the City is a magnificent achievement that vividly demonstrates the value of global labor history.

Julie Greene, Professor of History, University of Maryland at College Park

Read all 14 reviews

A valuable work of historical recovery.
Eric Brandom, Age of Revolutions
The book is an impressive achievement, and with its 850 pages, a must-have for anyone interested in labour or urban history.
Hannas Rolf, Radical Housing Journal
As Claiming the City impresses upon us, municipal socialism is more than an ethic or fulcrum for organizing—it is a means of securing investment and redefining the public interest. Its revivalists must persuade ordinary people of what can be gained from democratic control of economic life.
Justin H. Vassallo, Dissent
In his panoramic new book, Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism, labor historian Shelton Stromquist offers an invigorating portrait of an era that many socialists have recently rediscovered in hopes of finding a model for radical local politics today.
Justin H. Vassallo, Dissent
Shelton Stromquist has written an ambitious and exciting work in Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism.
Mathias Fuelling, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
Claiming the City is a valuable work of historical recovery.
Eric Brandom, Age of Revolutions
Shelton Stromquist’s book is very rich account of the history of municipal socialism.
Hannes Rolf, Radical Housing Journal
Claiming the City is a towering contribution to the scholarship on global socialism. This volume offers encyclopedic knowledge of municipal socialism, which has never been studied from a global perspective. In the process, it advances several historiographical conversations, innovating them and offering a model for future research.
Lorenzo Costaguta, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
Stromquist's masterpiece of comparative labor and working-class history will undoubtedly become a classic in the field and a starting point for another generation of histories of municipal reform.
Janine Giordano Drake, New Labor Forum
Claiming the City remains an excellent addition to global labor history because it elevates the role of the city and locality, moving away from national focused histories in the process ... By focusing on the locality of workers' lives and examining how each city witnesses unique struggles, it delivers a new perspective on the importance of labor and socialist parties in providing immediate improvements to peoples' lives. It further advances the field through its detailed research that will be used by researchers for decades to better understand the battles that took place in each city and those who sacrificed so much to make these improvements
Aloysius Landrigan, H—Socialisms, H-Net Reviews
Relevant lessons, drawn from the experience of more than 1200 municipal officials elected as candidates of the Socialist Party (SP) during its early 20th century heyday, were pretty much unknown and forgotten. Only recently have activists had invaluable historical guides like Shelton Stromquist's Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers Fight for Municipal Socialism
Steve Early, Social Policy

A valuable work of historical recovery.
Eric Brandom, Age of Revolutions
The book is an impressive achievement, and with its 850 pages, a must-have for anyone interested in labour or urban history.
Hannas Rolf, Radical Housing Journal
As Claiming the City impresses upon us, municipal socialism is more than an ethic or fulcrum for organizing—it is a means of securing investment and redefining the public interest. Its revivalists must persuade ordinary people of what can be gained from democratic control of economic life.
Justin H. Vassallo, Dissent
In his panoramic new book, Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism, labor historian Shelton Stromquist offers an invigorating portrait of an era that many socialists have recently rediscovered in hopes of finding a model for radical local politics today.
Justin H. Vassallo, Dissent
Shelton Stromquist has written an ambitious and exciting work in Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism.
Mathias Fuelling, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
Claiming the City is a valuable work of historical recovery.
Eric Brandom, Age of Revolutions
Shelton Stromquist’s book is very rich account of the history of municipal socialism.
Hannes Rolf, Radical Housing Journal
Claiming the City is a towering contribution to the scholarship on global socialism. This volume offers encyclopedic knowledge of municipal socialism, which has never been studied from a global perspective. In the process, it advances several historiographical conversations, innovating them and offering a model for future research.
Lorenzo Costaguta, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
Stromquist's masterpiece of comparative labor and working-class history will undoubtedly become a classic in the field and a starting point for another generation of histories of municipal reform.
Janine Giordano Drake, New Labor Forum
Claiming the City remains an excellent addition to global labor history because it elevates the role of the city and locality, moving away from national focused histories in the process ... By focusing on the locality of workers' lives and examining how each city witnesses unique struggles, it delivers a new perspective on the importance of labor and socialist parties in providing immediate improvements to peoples' lives. It further advances the field through its detailed research that will be used by researchers for decades to better understand the battles that took place in each city and those who sacrificed so much to make these improvements
Aloysius Landrigan, H—Socialisms, H-Net Reviews
Relevant lessons, drawn from the experience of more than 1200 municipal officials elected as candidates of the Socialist Party (SP) during its early 20th century heyday, were pretty much unknown and forgotten. Only recently have activists had invaluable historical guides like Shelton Stromquist's Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers Fight for Municipal Socialism
Steve Early, Social Policy