Today in Labor History June 20, 1893: Eugene Debs formed the American Railway Union (ARU), one of the first unions to organize by industry and regardless of race (along with the Knights of Labor and IWW, which he cofounded in 1905). Within a few months the union was leading an 18-day strike against the Great Northern Railroad, successfully forcing management to reverse three wage cuts, despite the fact that the nation was in the midst of a terrible depression. The victory set the union on a remarkable course in which it averaged 2,000 new members a day. Debs was jailed during World War I for making antiwar speeches. He ran for president from jail, as a socialist, and won 4% of the vote. The photograph shows union leaders who were jailed during the 1894 Pullman Strike, including Debs.
That Jacobin article on #NoamChomsky was hot garbage.
The comparisons to #Marx are especially bizarre given that #Chomsky is probably one of the more prominent anti-communist liberals out there. He’s spent his career paying the most basic lip service to Marx and then ruthlessly criticizing socialist countries with no regard for larger historical context. He actually peddles the idea that Leninism is a right-wing perversion of Marx and referred to #Marxism as an “irrational cult.”
He talks like a radical but has proved to be pretty hostile to actual radicals. In effect, he’s just prolonging the status quo. Like other prominent liberals, he actually acts as an another defense for the rule of capital by endlessly belittling and misrepresenting real left movements. #communism#socialism
Today in Labor History June 19, 1903: Benito Mussolini, at the time a radical Socialist, was arrested by Bern police for advocating a violent general strike. As strange as it may seem, in light of his rise to become one of the most powerful and violent fascist leaders in the world, Mussolini came from a radical leftist background. In his youth, he idealized figures like Bakunin and Garibaldi. His father, who was a socialist, named him Benito, after Mexico’s liberal leader Benito Juarez. His two middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, were named after Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani.
Today in Labor History June 16, 1836: The London Working Men's Association was formed, launching the Chartist movement. The Chartists took their name from the People's Charter, which demanded universal suffrage for men, regardless of social class. The movement appealed to skilled workers, not the masses of unskilled laborers. They followed the utopian socialism of Robert Owen. The movement lasted from 1838 to 1857. America’s first cop, Allan Pinkerton, creator of the Secret Service & persecutor of the Molly Maguires, was a radical participant in the Chartist movement before becoming the bulldog of capitalists. While the Chartism was primarily a constitutional movement, there was a radical, insurrectionary wing. Pinkerton was a part of this wing. He fought cops, destroyed property, set fires and had to flee the UK in order to avoid imprisonment. You can read my satirical biography of him here: https://marshalllawwriter.com/the-eye-that-never-sleeps/
Today in Labor History June 13, 1889: Amadeo Bordiga was born (d1970). Proponent of Council Communism and the Italian Communist Left, as well as a founder of the Italian Communist Party. He was a major influence on the 20th century Ultra Left. He called Stalin "the gravedigger of the revolution." Bordiga was imprisoned twice by Mussolini. Lenin criticized him in his screed, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920).
Fascism isn't just some goofy looking mustache man yelling racist things in a microphone. A proper analysis of fascism is required to stop it.
Fascism is a political tendency that is the result of years of scapegoating, racist propaganda, and economic disenfranchisement, that can best be described as a form of revolutionary populist ultranationalism. Typically, the rich and the powerful attempt to utilize the popularity of the fascist leader to benefit themselves during periods of crisis (the great depression, climate change) , allowing the fascist access to the political institutions required to implement their agenda. The fascist then attempts to implement a constitutional coup to give themselves totalitarian control of the political system, and, once achieved, uses this power to purge society of elements deemed impure or hostile to the fascist nation-state while maintaining the oligarchical ownership of the means of production characteristic of monopoly capitalism.
Lets not bow to scare-mongering about socialism, lets celebrate its really-existing (if imperfect) form in the shape of the NHS.
I agree with Charles Osborne (letters/Observer):
'I’d like Labour politicians to pledge to apply the principles of the NHS to other state bodies. And if the Tories and the rightwing press scream that this is socialism, Labour should ask people how bad the socialism of the NHS has been for them'!
Hello. I’m new to Mastodon. I’m here because a) I want to support companies that give a shit about digital privacy, b) I want to follow and talk with folks who are tracking right-wing asshole shenanigans, and c) I’m looking for a community that can support me in my attempt at studying socialist/anarchist philosophy and applying what I’ve learned. #digitalprivacy#socialism#anarchism#Christofascism
Today in Labor History June 4, 1932: Chilean politicians and the military carried out a coup d'etat, installing Marmaduke Grove, who declared Chile a "socialist republic." However, workers were given no means to participate. The Communist Party and many unions opposed the new government because it was run by the military and not by the workers. However, the “socialist” government did temporarily halt evictions and ordered the “Caja de Crédito Popular” to return tools and clothes that workers had pawned there. They also pardoned everyone who participated in the Sailors' mutiny of 1931, when enlisted men rebelled against their officers and the state. Furthermore, they provided free meals to the unemployed. Twelve days later, the military ended the "workers republic." That same year, Farabundo Marti led a short-lived, but successful communist revolution of indigenous peasants in El Salvador. It was violently suppressed by General Martinez a few months later in La Matanza, a genocide of up to 40,000 mostly indigenous people. Martinez then became the first head of state to officially recognize Hitler as leader of Germany.
May 16, 1934: Teamsters initiated a General Strike (5/16-8/21) for union recognition in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, which was, then, the main distribution center for the upper Midwest. The worst violence occurred on Bloody Friday, July 20, when police shot at strikers in a downtown truck battle, killing two and injuring 67. Continuing violence lasted throughout the summer. The strike formally ended on August 22. The strike was led by the Trotskyist Communist League of America, which later founded the Socialist Workers Party (United States). While this General Strike was going on in Minneapolis, there was an equally violent General Strike going continuing on San Francisco’s waterfront (5/9-7/31), with much of the West Coast dockers joining them (Everett, WA; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; and Los Angeles, CA). 9 workers were killed in the West Coast waterfront strikes, along with over 1,000 injuries and over 500 arrests. At the same time, there was also a General Strike going on in Toledo, OH, the Auto Lite Strike (4/12-6/3), in which 2 workers were killed.
Today in Labor History May 14, 1771: Utopian-socialist Robert Owen was born on this day in Wales. In the early 1800s, he made a fortune in textiles. However, he tried to run his mills on higher principles than greed. One of his reforms was to offer prices at his company store that were only slightly higher than their wholesale cost. This was in marked contrast to his competitors, who paid their workers only in scrip and charged exorbitant prices at their company stores. In 1810, Owen implemented the eight-hour workday for his employees. And in 1817, he came up with the slogan, “Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” He also provided free schools for the children of factory workers.
In 1824, he travelled to America and invested his fortune in an experimental socialistic commune at New Harmony, Indiana. It only survived for two years. However, it changed many aspects of American culture. Residents created the first public library and public school system open to both boys and girls. The town also became an important center of scientific research in the mid-1800s.
Today in Labor History May 12, 1916: The authorities executed James Connolly on this date for his role in the Easter Rising, which took place in Dublin, the month prior. The uprising sought to end British rule and create an independent Ireland. 485 people died in the fighting, including 143 British soldiers and cops. The rest were mostly Irish civilians. The British took 3,500 prisoners and sent 1,800 to internment camps. They also executed sixteen of the rebel leaders, sparking outrage among the Irish public. Connolly was an Irish republican, socialist and union leader. Prior to the Easter Rising, he lived in Scotland and participated in Scottish socialist organizations. After that, he emigrated to the U.S., where he cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood. He also founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York. In Ireland, and was a leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. He also participated in the Dublin lock-out, one of the largest and most severe labor disputes in Irish history.
Today in Labor History May 11, 1894: The Pullman Railroad Strike began in Chicago, Illinois, when 4,000 workers walked off the job. It began as a wildcat strike and quickly escalated into the largest industrial strike to date in the U.S. Nearly 260,000 railroad workers participated. The strike and boycott halted nearly all rail traffic west of Detroit. The strike began during a severe depression. George Pullman lowered wages and began laying off workers, without reducing rent in his company town of Pullman, Illinois, where most of the workers lived. Eugene Debs rose to prominence as a labor leader during this strike. The American Federation of Labor refused solidarity because they thought Debs was stealing their members, as the American Railway Union was not an AFofL member. The government sent in federal troops to suppress the strike. 30 workers were killed in Chicago, alone. Over 40 more were killed in other parts of the country. Property damage exceeded $80 million. Debs would go on to run for president four times, as a socialist, running some of his campaigns from prison. He was also a founding member of the radical IWW, along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, and Easter Rising martyr, James Connolly.
Jonathan Chait is real mad that leftists aren't taking liberal shit anymore. I got the link from archive.is to avoid giving his BS any extra clicks. It's way longer than it needs to be. This paragraph caught my attention though because it's at least an attempt at clarifying what liberals see as leftism and why they're wrong (which is why they should shut the fuck up, because they have been proven so very fucking wrong, so often, and for so long):
I don’t want to bore you...
lol
by attempting the umpteenth definition of liberalism,
Funny how liberals hate defining liberalism
so I will lay out the distinction as briefly as possible. On economic questions, leftists have an overwhelming bias for state action over markets, while liberals are more selective.
This is incorrect. Leftists differ radically on how much state action over markets is needed. What unites leftists is the belief that we need democracy in economic realms as well as political ones. (I personally don't accept fully authoritarian MLs as leftists, one can debate that, but that's where I stand.) Liberals think it's just fine for us to have democratic politics but for most people to work for institutions that are run as dictatorships.
...On politics, liberals take very seriously notions of individual rights and universally applicable principles, while leftists tend to criticize political liberalism as a recipe for maintaining inequalities of power between the privileged and the oppressed.
Sort of true, but Chait tellingly leaves out the substance of the leftist critique, the reason why they think that political liberalism is a recipe for maintaining inequality, to wit: the lack of democracy in most people's workplaces. If economic power is concentrated while political power is distributed, then inevitably political power will become concentrated as well. Because money is power.
Anyway, Chait hates "Solidarity" the book and he also hates solidarity the concept. Of course he gets paid to represent left-of-center thought at major USA publications. Feel free to discuss your disgust for this type of guy further in replies.
Gaetano Salvemini smuggled a copy of the court transcripts of Matteotti's trial out of Italy:
"Per conto mio, già nell'agosto del 1925, avevo trafugato fuori d'Italia una copia della requisitoria del Pubblico Ministero Santoro nella inchiesta senatoriale sulle accuse mosse da Giuseppe Do- nati contro il direttore generale della pubblica sicurezza, generale De Bono. Dopo averli utilizzati affidai quei docu- menti alla biblioteca della School of Economics di Londra, nel dicembre 1926"
The day after there was an unsuccessful attempt to steal the transcripts, but they were kept in the Library's safe.
Very excited that we are now going to be digitising these transcripts and putting them freely available online, 100 years after Matteotti's murder. Hopefully they will be available by end of June this year. Attached is a photograph of them in situ.