Selected Works of Bryan D. Palmer

1970s

“Class, Conception and Conflict: The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labour, and the Working Class Rebellion, 1903–1922.” Review of Radical Political Economics 7, no. 2 (July 1975): 31–49.
“‘Give Us the Road and We Will Run It’: The Social and Cultural Matrix of an Emerging Labour Movement.” In Essays in Canadian Working-Class History, edited by Gregory S. Kealey and Peter Warrian, 106–24. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976.
“Modernizing History.” Bulletin of the Committee on Canadian Labour History 2 (Autumn 1976): 16–25.
“Most Uncommon Common Men: Craft and Culture in Historical Perspective.” Labour/Le Travailleur 1 (1976): 5–31.
“Through the Prism of the Strike: Industrial Conflict in Southern Ontario, 1901–14,” with Craig Heron. Canadian Historical Review 58, no. 4 (December 1977): 423–58.
“Discordant Music: Charivaris and Whitecapping in Nineteenth-Century North America.” Labour/Le Travailleur 3 (1978): 5–62.
A Culture in Conflict: Skilled Workers and Industrial Capitalism in Hamilton, Ontario, 1860–1914. Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979.
“Working-Class Canada: Recent Historical Writing.” Queen’s Quarterly 86, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 594–616.

1980s

“Kingston Mechanics and the Rise of the Penitentiary, 1833–1836.” Histoire sociale/Social History 13, no. 25 (May 1980): 7–32.
“The Bonds of Unity: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900,” with Gregory S. Kealey. Histoire sociale/Social History 14, no. 28 (November 1981): 369–411.
The Making of E. P. Thompson: Marxism, Humanism, and History. Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1981.
“They Ride Horses Don’t They? Historical Musings on the Canadian State and its Agents.” Our Generation 14 (1981): 28–41.
“Classifying Culture.” Labour/Le Travailleur 8/9 (1981/1982): 153–83.
Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900, with Gregory S. Kealey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Reprint, Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1987; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
“The Empire Strikes Back: Historical Reflections on the Arms Race.” Studies in Political Economy 12, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 103–19.
“Town, Port, and Country: Speculations on the Capitalist Transformation of Canada.” Acadiensis 12 (Spring 1983): 131–39.
Working-Class Experience: The Rise and Reconstitution of Canadian Labour, 1800–1980. 1st ed. Toronto: Butterworth, 1983. Reprint, Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800–1991. 2nd ed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992.
“Emperor Katz’s New Clothes; or with the Wizard in Oz.” Labour/Le Travail 13 (Spring 1984): 190–97.
“Social Formation and Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century North America.” In Proletarianization and Family History, edited by David Levine, 229–308. New York: Academic Press, 1984.
“Labour in Nineteenth-Century Canada.” In Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History, edited by W. J. C. Cherwinski and Gregory S. Kealey, 51–57. St. John’s, NL: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1985.
“‘Taking It’: Ontario Workers’ Struggles.” In Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History, edited by W. J. C. Cherwinski and Gregory S. Kealey, 183–98. St. John’s, NL: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1985.
“Three Blind Professors.” Socialist Studies Bulletin 1 (Winter 1985): 16–28.
“Listening to History Rather Than Historians: Reflections on Working Class History.” Studies in Political Economy 20, no. 1 (1986): 47–84.
The Character of Class Struggle: Essays in Canadian Working-Class History, 1850–1985. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.
“The Rise and Fall of British Columbia’s Solidarity.” In The Character of Class Struggle: Essays in Canadian Working-Class History, 1850–1985, edited by Bryan D. Palmer, 176–200. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.
“Labor History at the Crossroads: The Mid-Life Crisis of Working-Class Studies in America.” Canadian Review of American Studies 18, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 247–53.
Solidarity: The Rise and Fall of an Opposition in British Columbia. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1987.
A Communist Life: Jack Scott and the Canadian Workers Movement, 1927–1985. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer. St. John’s, NL: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 1988.
“Reformism and the Fight Against the Right: British Columbia’s Solidarity.” In Reshaping the US Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s. Vol. 3 of The Year Left, edited by Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker, 229–54. London: Verso, 1988.
“‘What the Hell’: Or Some Comments on Class Formation and Cultural Reproduction.” In Popular Cultures and Political Practices, edited by Richard B. Gruneau, 33–42. Toronto: Garamond Press, 1988.
Work and Unions in Canada. About Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Studies Directorate, 1988.
“The American Way of Seeing Class.” Labour/Le Travail 24 (Fall 1989): 245–52.

1990s

Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
“The Eclipse of Materialism: Marxism and the Writing of Social History in the 1980s.” Socialist Register 1990: The Retreat of the Intellectuals 26 (1990): 111–46.
“Great Upheavals: The 1880s and 1890s.” In Who Built America? A Social History of Working People in the United States, vol. 2, edited by Stephen Brier and Herbert G. Gutman, 61–157. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
“Is There Now or Has There Ever Been a Working Class?” History Today 42 (March 1992): 51–54.
“The Emergence of Working-Class Collectivity.” In Who Built America? A Social History of Working People in the United States, vol. 2, edited by Stephen Brier and Herbert G. Gutman, 61–157. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800–1991. 2nd ed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992.
“Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism: The Poverty of Theory Revisited.” International Review of Social History 38 (August 1993): 133–62.
“Homage to Edward Thompson, Part I.” Labour/Le Travail 32 (Fall 1993): 10–71.
“Poststructuralism/Postmodernism, Internationalism, and Socialism.” Socialist Alternatives 2 (Winter 1993): 48–62.
“The Changing Face of Labour Protest.” In The Land Transformed, 1800–1891. Vol. 2 of Historical Atlas of Canada, edited by R. Louis Gentilcore, Plate 57. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
“The Condition of Postmodernity and the Poststructuralist Challenge to Political Meaning.” Maryland Historian 24 (Spring–Summer 1993): 55–71.
“The Poverty of Theory Revisited: Or, Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism.” Left History 1, no. 1 (1993): 67–101.
“Canadian Controversies.” History Today 44 (November 1994): 44–49.
Capitalism Comes to the Backcountry: The Goodyear Invasion of Napanee. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1994. Published also as Goodyear Invades the Backcountry: The Corporate Takeover of a Rural Town. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1994.
E. P. Thompson: Objections and Oppositions. London: Verso, 1994.
“Homage to Edward Thompson, Part II.” Labour/Le Travail 33 (Spring 1994): 13–68.
“Thompson’s Tone.” Studies in Political Economy 43 (Spring 1994): 11–17.
“Upper Canada.” In Beginnings to Confederation. Vol. 1 of Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide, edited by M. Brook Taylor, 184–236. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
“Bread and Roses: Sheila Rowbotham—The Political and the Accessible in the Writing of Gender History.” Radical History Review 63 (1995): 159–65.
“Les sociétés mutualistes au Canada (1850–1950).” In Mutualités de tous les pays: Un passé riche d’avenir, edited by Michel Dreyfus and Bernard Gibaud, 99–112. Paris: Mutualité Française, 1995.
“Small Unions and Dissidents in the History of Canadian Trade Unionism.” In Hard Lessons: The Mine Mill Union in the Canadian Labour Movement, edited by Mercedes Steedman, Peter Suschnigg, and Dieter K. Buse, 39–49. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995.
“Learning to Love the Cops.” Literary Review of Canada 5, no. 6 (June 1996): 12–14.
“Mutuality and the Masking/Making of Difference: Mutual Benefit Societies in Canada, 1830–1950.” In Social Security Mutualism: The Comparative History of Mutual Benefit Societies, edited by Marcel van der Linden, 111–46. Bern: Peter Lang, 1996.
“Nineteenth-Century Canada and Australia: The Paradoxes of Class Formation.” Labour/Le Travail 38 (Fall 1996): 16–36. Published simultaneously in Australia in Labour History 71 (November 1996): 16–36.
“Night in the Capitalist, Cold War City: Noir and the Cultural Politics of Darkness.” Left History 5, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 57–76.
“Old Positions/New Necessities: History, Class, and Marxist Metanarrative.” In In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda, edited by Ellen Meiksins Wood and John Bellamy Foster, 65–73. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997.
“Before Braverman: Harry Frankel and the American Workers’ Movement.” Monthly Review 50, no. 8 (January 1999): 33–46.
“Foucault and the Historians: The Case of ‘On the Case.’” Literary Review of Canada 7, no. 10 (Summer 1999): 11–17.
“In the Belly of the Bear: A Russian Diary [Part 1].” Literary Review of Canada 11 (1999): 19–23.
“In the Belly of the Bear: A Russian Diary [Part 2].” Literary Review of Canada 99 (2000): 24–27.
“Of Silences and Trenches: A Dissident View of Granatstein’s Meaning.” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 4 (December 1999): 676–86.

2000–2010

Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression [From Medieval to Modern]. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.
“Historiographic Hassles: Class and Gender, Evidence and Interpretation.” Histoire sociale/Social History 33, no. 65 (May 2000): 105–44.
Labouring the Canadian Millennium: Writings on Work and Workers, History and Historiography. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer. St. John’s, NL: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 2000.
“Pluralism Popped.” Literary Review of Canada 8, no. 4 (May 2000): 9–12.
“Class Dismissed.” Literary Review of Canada 9, no. 2 (March 2001): 18–21.
“How to be Difficult: Advice from an Unrepentant Radical.” Literary Review of Canada 10, no. 2 (March 2002): 13–15.
“Reasoning Rebellion: E. P. Thompson, British Marxist Historians, and the Making of Dissident Political Mobilization.” Labour/Le Travail 50 (Fall 2002): 187–216.
“Renegades: J. L. Cohen, Bill Walsh, and the Tragedies of the Canadian Left.” Journal of Canadian Studies 37, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 207–24.
“Communist History: Seeing It Whole. A Reply to Critics.” American Communist History 2, no. 2 (December 2003): 203–14.
“Hydra’s Materialist History.” Historical Materialism 11, no. 4 (2003): 373–94.
“Leon Trotsky: Planet Without a Visa.” Left History 9, no. 1 (2003): 79–96.
“Rethinking the Historiography of United States Communism.” American Communist History 2, no. 2 (December 2003): 139–73.
“The Hands That Built America: A Class-Politics Appreciation of Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York.” Historical Materialism 11, no. 4 (2003): 317–45.
“What’s Law Got to Do with It? Historical Considerations on Class Struggle, Boundaries of Constraint, and Capitalist Authority.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 41, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2003): 465–90.
“Whom Do You Trust?” New Labor Forum 12 (Spring 2003): 92–99.
“Race and Revolution.” Labour/Le Travail 54 (Fall 2004): 193–221.
“Rhyming Reds and Fractious Fictions: Canada’s Heritage of Literary Radicalism.” American Review of Canadian Studies 34, no. 1 (March 2004): 99–128.
“The Making of the English Working Class di Thompson, quarant’anni dopo.” Passato e presente 62 (2004): 85–110.
“Maurice Spector, James P. Cannon, and the Origins of Canadian Trotskyism.” Labour/Le Travail 56 (Fall 2005): 91–148.
“Movimentos noturnos: Um prólogo profano às histórias da noite.” Textos de História: Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da UnB 13, no. 1–2 (2005): 205–30.
“CSI Labor History: Haymarket and the Forensics of Forgetting.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3, no. 1 (March 2006): 25–36.
“Fin-de-Siècle Labour History in Canada and the United States: A Case for Tradition.” In Global Labour History: A State of the Art, edited by Jan Lucassen, 195–226. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006.
“Historical Materialism and the Writing of Canadian History: A Dialectical View.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 17, no. 2 (2006): 33–60.
“Left History on the Middle Ground.” Left History 11, no. 1(2006): 47–57.
“American Communism in the 1920s: Striving for a Panoramic View.” American Communist History 6, no. 2 (December 2007): 139–49.
“Canada’s Workers Movement: Uneven Developments,” with Michael Goldfield. Labour/Le Travail 59 (Spring 2007): 149–77.
James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890–1928. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
“Las políticas de Hobsbawm: se ha detenido la marcha hacia adelante del Frente Popular.” In Los historiadores y la historia para el siglo XXI: Homenaje a Eric J. Hobsbawm, edited by Gumersindo Vera Hernández et al., 93–104. Conaculta-INAH, Mexico, 2007.
“Marxismo metropolitano y amplitud analitca en la historia de Hobsbawm.” In Los historiadores y la historia para el siglo XXI: Homenaje a Eric J. Hobsbawm, edited by Gumersindo Vera Hernández et al., 145–58. Conaculta-INAH, Mexico, 2007.
Labouring Canada: Class, Gender, and Race in Canadian Working-Class History. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer and Joan Sangster. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2008.
“La historia social y la coyuntura presente.” Historia Social 60 (2008): 185–92.
“Popular Radicalism and the Theatrics of Rebellion: The Hybrid Discourse of Dissent in Upper Canada.” In Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America, edited by Nancy Christie, 403–39. Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008.
“Wildcat Workers in the 1960s: The Unruly Face of Class Struggle.” In Labouring Canada: Class, Gender, and Race in Canadian Working-Class History, edited by Bryan D. Palmer and Joan Sangster, 373–94. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
“New Left Liberations: The Poetics, Praxis, and Politics of Youth Liberation.” In The Sixties in Canada: A Turbulent and Creative Decade, edited by M. Athena Palaeologu, 65–149. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2009.
“Radical Reasoning.” Feature Review Essay. The Underhill Review: A Forum of History, Ideas, and Culture 3 (Fall 2009): 1–32. https://www3.carleton.ca/underhillreview/09/fall/reviews/palmer.htm.
“That Was Then, and This Is Now: Socialist Reflections on Responding to Capitalist Crises: Priority #9: Build a Socialist Left, Inside and Outside of the Unions.” Labour/Le Travail 64 (Fall 2009): 167–72.
“What Was Great About Theodore Draper and What Was Not.” American Communist History 8, no. 1 (June 2009): 15–21.
“Canada.” In Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives, edited by Joan Allen, Alan Campbell, and John McIlroy, 196–230. Pontypool: Merlin Press, 2010.
“The Personal, the Political, and Permanent Revolution: Ernest Mandel and the Conflicted Legacies of Trotskyism.” International Review of Social History 55, no. 1 (April 2010): 117–32.
“The Democratic Revolutionary: Reviving Lenin.” Left History 15, no. 1 (2010): 169–74.

2011–2020

H-Diplo Roundtable Review of From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917–19, by Benjamin Isitt. H-Diplo 12, no. 15 (2011): 14–22. https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XII-15.pdf.
“Profits of Doom: Spectres of Capitalist Crisis.” Labour/Le Travail 67 (Spring 2011): 189–201.
“‘Cracking the Stone’: The Long History of Capitalist Crisis and Toronto’s Dispossessed, 1830–1930,” with Gaétan Héroux. Labour/Le Travail 69 (Spring 2012): 9–62.
“‘Indians of All Tribes’: The Birth of Red Power.” In Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties, edited by Lara Campbell, Dominique Clement, and Gregory S. Kealey, 193–210. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
“The Black and the Red.” New Left Review 77 (September–October 2012): 151–60.
“The Irrepressible Revolutionary: Marx for the Uninitiated, the Unconvinced and the Unrepentant.” Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory 40, no. 1 (2012): 119–35.
“A história enquanto debate: A análise contestadora de ‘A Formação da Classe Operária Inglesa.’” Mundos do Trabalho 5, no. 10 (July–December 2013): 13–35.
“La historia como polémica: El análisis de contrarios en ‘La formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra.’” Sociología História 3 (December 2013): 59–92.
“Paradox and the Thompson ‘School of Awkwardness.’” In E. P. Thompson and English Radicalism, edited by Roger Fieldhouse and Richard Taylor, 205–27. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.
Revolutionary Teamsters: The Minneapolis Truckers’ Strikes of 1934. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
“The Artist Formerly, and Again, Known as Rodriguez: A Life Beyond Imagination.” Against the Current 162 (January/February 2013): 31–35, 44.
“Marching under Flags Black and Red: Toronto’s Dispossessed in the Age of Industry,” with Gaétan Héroux. In Workers in Hard Times: A Long View of Economic Crises, edited by Leon Fink, Joseph A. McCartin, and Joan Sangster, 19–44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014.
“Paradox and Polemic; Argument and Awkwardness: Reflections on E. P. Thompson.” Contemporary British History 28, no. 4 (December 2014): 382–403.
“Paradoxo e polêmica, argumentos e constrangimento: Reflexões sobre E. P. Thompson.” História e Perspectivas 1 (January–June 2014): 55–89.
“Reconsiderations of Class: Precariousness as Proletarianization.” Socialist Register 2014: Registering Class 50 (2014): 40–62.
“The Unbearable Precariousness of Working and Artistic Being: The Labours of Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge.” In Precarious: Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, 17–22. Waterloo, ON: Robert Langen Art Gallery, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2014.
“A Tate Gallery for the New Left: Portraits, Landscapes, and Abstracts in the Revolutionary Activism of the 1950s and 1960s.” Labour/Le Travail 75 (Spring 2015): 231–62.
“Caminhoneiros vermelhos: O sindicalismo democrático nos Estados Unidos.” Outubro 23, no. 1 (2015): 15–32.
Interpretive Essays on Class Formation and Historical Practice. Vol. 1 of Marxism and Historical Practice. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Reprint, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017.
Interventions and Appreciations. Vol. 2 of Marxism and Historical Practice. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Reprint, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017.
“La lutte de classes et les dépossédés.” Actuel Marx 58 (2015): 28–45.
“History.” In Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle, edited by Kelly Fritsch, Clare O’Connor, and A. K. Thompson, 191–97. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016.
“The Socialist Dimension.” In Canada Since 1960: A People’s History, edited by Cy Gonick, 462–98. Toronto: James Lorimer, 2016.
“‘They Shall Not Pass’: Evictions and the Toronto Unemployed Movement, 1932–1936.” In III International Conference: Strikes and Social Conflicts: Combined Historical Approaches to Conflict. Proceedings, edited by Martí Marín Corbera, Xavier Domènech Sampere, and Ricard Martínez i Muntada, 1052–66. Barcelona: CEFID-UAB, 2016.
Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History, with Gaétan Héroux. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016.
“Canadian Studies at the Crossroads, Again!” Journal of Canadian Studies 51, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 10–36.
“Legacies of 1917: Revolution’s Longue Durée,” with Joan Sangster. American Communist History 16, nos. 1–2 (2017): 1–45.
“‘Mind Forg’d Manacles’ and Recent Pathways to ‘New’ Labor Histories.” International Review of Social History 62, no. 2 (August 2017): 279–303.
“The Distinctive Heritage of 1917: Resuscitating Revolution’s Longue Durée,” with Joan Sangster. Socialist Register 2017: Rethinking Revolution 53 (2017): 1–34.
US Trotskyism 1928–1965. Part I: Emergence – Left Opposition in the United States. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer, Paul Le Blanc, Thomas Bias, and Andrew Pollack. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
“Approaching Working-Class History as Class Struggle: A Canadian Contemplation; A Marxist Meditation.” Dialectical Anthropology 42 (2018): 443–56.
“Canada and the United States.” In Handbook Global History of Work, edited by Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden, 111–30. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018.
“Canada’s ‘1968’ and Historical Sensibilities.” American Historical Review 123, no. 3 (June 2018): 773–78.
“Response to Commentaries.” Dialectical Anthropology 42 (2018): 489–94.
“The French Turn in the United States: James P. Cannon and the Trotskyist Entry into the Socialist Party, 1934–1937.” Labor History 59, no. 5 (2018): 610–38.
“The Ghost of Jack Munro.” Review of On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement, by Rod Mickleburgh. The Ormsby Review 348 (22 August 2018). https://bcbooklook.com/2018/08/22/bc-labour-movement-history/.
US Trotskyism 1928–1965. Part II: Endurance – The Coming American Revolution. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer, Paul Le Blanc, and Thomas Bias. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
US Trotskyism 1928–1965. Part III: Resurgence – Uneven and Combined Development. Edited by Bryan D. Palmer and Paul Le Blanc. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
“A Left History of Liquorice: What It Means to Write ‘Left’ History.” Left History 23, no. 1 (2019): 8–27.
“‘Gagging’ the Revolutionary Party’: The First Smith Act Trial and the Rule of Law.” In The Class Politics of Law: Essays Inspired by Harry Glasbeek, edited by Eric Tucker and Judy Fudge, 171–88. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2019.
“How Can We Write Better Histories of Communism?” Labour/Le Travail 83 (Spring 2019): 199–232.
James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1929–1939. Leiden and Boston: Brill, forthcoming 2021.

List of Contributors