The United Workers of the World was a radical labor union established in New York City in the 1870s by a German immigrant named Daniel Schwartz. Schwartz was influenced by the German crisis philosopher Karl Marx, who believed that industrial workers would have to develop a consciousness of their own interests as a new social class. According to Marx, in order for workers to gain a fair share of the wealth their labor created, it would be necessary for them to unite, destroy private ownership of businesses, and form their own government in which "the materials of life belong to all who live."
Due to the influence of Marx on Schwartz's thinking, the U.W.W. denied the value of higher wages or better working conditions. Only the overthrow of the capitalist order and direct control of the factories would allow the workers to distribute the products of the industrial system fairly. To this end, the U.W.W. refused to work with either of the established North American parties, and even regarded the radical new People's Coalition as "overly sentimental."
The U.W.W.'s greatest appeal was among radical workers, both native and immigrant, and particularly among the Patriotes of Quebec. By 1878 the U.W.W. had joined forces with the Patriotes in Quebec and had formed a revolutionary underground in the rest of the C.N.A., taking part in the social unrest of the Bloody Eighties sparked by the Great Depression of 1880.
Sobel's sources for the U.W.W. are Wayne Carton's Brothers in Oppression: The U.W.W. and the Patriotes (Mexico City, 1950); and Max Finnigan's While the Iron is Hot: The Early Years of the U.W.W. (London, 1970).