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Connexions Calendar

Indigent Workers and Capitalist Crises in Toronto


November 09, 2012


What is proletarianization? The conventional answer to this question rests on waged labour. Yet many workers, past and present, are routinely unable to secure paid employment, in part because of the persistence of capitalist crises of various kinds. This study of indigent workers in Toronto from the 1830s to the1930s is premised on an understanding of proletarianization as dispossession, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the ways in which capitalism necessarily produces recurrent crises, leaving many workers wageless. It addresses how wagelessness and poverty were criminalized through the development of institutions of ostensible charitable relief, such as the Toronto House of Industry, in which those seeking shelter and sustenance were required to chop wood or, more onerously, break stone in order to be admitted to the ranks of those 'deserving' of such support. Against these measures, numerous protests took place in Toronto, where the black flag was carried in demonstrations demanding 'work or bread'. Refusals to 'crack the stone' and calls for different kinds of relief were common in mobilizations of the wageless in the opening decades of the twentieth century, in which socialists often took the lead. By the time of capitalism's severe crisis in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Toronto's wageless were well situated to mount an outcasts' offensive.

Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Venue: Sidney Smith Hall, SS2125
Location: 100 St. George Street Toronto, ON
Website: http://www.socialjustice.org/community/?f_cat=2&arch=4
Categories: Labour, Workplace, Unions

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