”To the average bourgeois mind, socialism is merely a menace, vague and formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he discusses social”To the average bourgeois mind, socialism is merely a menace, vague and formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics.�
Socialism was at its pinnacle in the United States when Jack London wrote this work. Eugene Debs, the Socialists Party candidate for president, won six percent of the vote in the election of 1912 (the highest percentage ever won by a Socialist). But despite this, the majority of Americans had almost no actual knowledge about it. Then, as now, it was used as a nebulous scare word meaning little more than “be afraid!�
London, a passionate socialist, attempted to use his fame to spread knowledge of socialism. The essays in this work display his skill as a storytelling wordsmith, explaining in clear, often entertaining language the divisions that amounted to a open warfare between the working classes and the capitalist class, and how each related to the government and the law.
I found three of these essays partially interesting: The Tramp, The Scab, and How I Became a Socialist. The first two of these combine insights that are still active and relevant to our present day world with picturesque details of the more physically violent class warfare common in London’s time. The third of these is London’s own story of how an epiphany he had while a tramp, riding the rails across America, converted him to the cause of socialism.
The gist of The Tramp is that, while polite society and all right-thinking people despise and ostracize those habitually out of work as indolent parasites, that the government and capitalist class actually manipulates the labor markets to make certain that there is always an underclass of unemployed persons.
”It has been shown that there are more men than there is work for men, and that the surplus labor army is an economic necessity.�
This is necessary to the capitalist, as without this buffer of unemployment, the worker would have too much leverage, and there could be no scabs to replace him when he strikes.
In The Scab London deals with one of his favorite themes � the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. He paints the struggle between labor and capital as all out warfare for survival. He strips the issue down from ideals and ideas to pure battle for supremacy:
”The only honest morality displayed by either side is white-hot indignation at the iniquities of the other side. The striking teamster complacently takes a scab driver into an alley, and with an iron bar breaks his arms, so that he can drive no more, but cries out to high Heaven for justice when the capitalist breaks his skull by means of a club in the hands of a policeman.�
”Without a quiver, a member of the capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with a brick.�
London grasped that, despite what propaganda existed to the contrary, that class struggle was a living reality:
”It is no longer a question of whether or not there is a class struggle. The question now is, what will be the outcome of the class struggle?�
London believed that the eventual triumph of socialism in America was inevitable. Reading this now, more than a century later, it is obvious that he was mistaken, at least within any timescale that he would have imagined. Yet this is still a valuable book on several levels. It gives a picture of London as dedicated socialist that has largely been erased from the public imagination of him. It paints a vivid picture of the violence of the clashes between capital and labor in the opening decades of the 20th century. And despite its age, it presents some valuable insights that are still pertinent today....more
During the long, dark history of oppression against the labor movement (prior to 1935’s National Labor Relations Act) the capital class wielded two maDuring the long, dark history of oppression against the labor movement (prior to 1935’s National Labor Relations Act) the capital class wielded two major weapons in their class warfare against labor. The first was governmental violence � local police and National Guards used to beat, bully, or kill strikers, their families and supporters with impunity. The second was control of the press� spreading propaganda of fear and hatred against labor, excusing and whitewashing the violence used against them as necessary to protect the public welfare. This book is an example of the latter.
The Great Strike of 1877 was the first great uprising of Labor in the 19th century. It started as a strike against the railroads, who had severely cut wages during an ongoing depression, and it effected many large cities, from Buffalo to Baltimore, Pittsburgh to St. Louis. It effectively shut down the nation’s transportation system, and was spreading through sympathy to other industries � becoming the powerful and dreaded general strike. It was the first great flexing of Labors muscles, and as such, was brutally suppressed by the Capitalist Barons of Industry. Calling on police, militia, and federal troops, the strike was violently broken with lethal, government sanctioned violence.
This book was a contemporary account of the strike, written just a few months after the events by Joseph A. Dacus, a St Louis newspaper reporter. Its incendiary, loaded language casts the strikers and their supporters as a rabble of the most dangerous and useless dregs of society:
”In the large cities the cause of the strikers was espoused by a nondescript class of the idle, the vicious, and the whole rabble of the Pariahs of society.�
”It was evident that the spirit of the Internationalists was reveling with fiendish delight amid the scenes of tumult everywhere observable on the streets. Pittsburgh was fast becoming drunk with passion � dark, unrelenting devilish passion, that would hesitate to commit no crime, shrink not from any deed of horror.�
In doing so, Dacus justifies the brutal violence used to break the strike, while spreading fear against any laborers who dared to stand up to wickedly unfair treatment. He invoked the specter of The Paris Commune, a socialist people’s movement that had briefly taken over Paris in 1871 before it was brutally destroyed. This was the beginnings of the Red Scare in America, a boogie that would be invoked over and over to suppress labor reform and free speech. Propaganda like this by Dacus set the stage for the violence a decade later in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, and became a template for generations of hate mongering and slander against labor, immigrants, and social reform. Its only value is as a contemporary example of the Capitalist control of the press as a weapon in their class war against the workers (which accounts for two, rather than one stars). ...more
”These songs combine harmonizing and hell-raising, rhythm and rebellion, poetry and politics, singing and striking.� ~Tom Morello
”The IWW literally wr”These songs combine harmonizing and hell-raising, rhythm and rebellion, poetry and politics, singing and striking.� ~Tom Morello
”The IWW literally wrote the book on protest music.� ~Tom Morello
Wobblies (I.W.W.) fought for One Big Union and sang from The Little Red Songbook. Their songs were powerful, angry, often funny.
”These songs look an unjust world square in the eye, slice it apart with satire, dismantle it with rage, and then drop a mighty singalong chorus fit to raise the roof of a union hall or a holding cell. Then repeat…until we win.� ~Tom Morello, from the Forward
Joe Hill, famous labor martyr and one of the I.W.W.s most prolific songwriters, understood the power of a song as a means of communicating and building solidarity. He wrote:
”A pamphlet, no matter how good, is only read once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.�
There were many editions of The Little Red Songbook. Songs were added and dropped out. This book, The Big Red Songbook, is a historical artifact compiled to collect most of those songs, along with other Wobblies songs that for one reason or another never made it into The Little Red Songbook. The songs include lengthy introductions. Also included is historical and cultural context provided in the forward from Tom Morello, and the preface by Archie Green.
”To understand the IWW’s contagious musical blend, one must hear in the mind’s ear rebel unionist who knew L’Internationale and La Marseillaise, as well as homespun shanties and ballads indigenous to ranch bunkhouse, hobo jungle, or mountain-mining camp.� ~Archie Green
David Roediger contributed an essay of the benefits and drawbacks of the Wobblies tradition of not copyrighting their songs, and Salvatore Salerno’s essay addresses the use of images in the Wobblies tradition (some of which are also collected here).
The Big Red Songbook is a valuable artifact. The songs here collected are our history, our folklore, and in many case, continue as part of a living tradition of labor protest and activism. Learn. Sing. Fight. And remember � Solidarity Forever!...more
”Pittsburgh does not represent ordinary capitalism, the capitalism that bickers and dickers with organized labor. Pittsburgh is capitalism militant � ”Pittsburgh does not represent ordinary capitalism, the capitalism that bickers and dickers with organized labor. Pittsburgh is capitalism militant � capitalism armed to the teeth and carrying a chip on its shoulder.� ~Floyd Dell
In 1919, Pittsburgh was at the epicenter of an industry wide steel strike that shook the nation. Coming at a time of heightened patriotism and paranoia, the laborers who were demanding a living wage, an end to 24 hour shifts, an eight hour day and a six day week (among other eminently reasonable demands) found all the power of the steel bosses, local government, police, and press arrayed against them. Soldiers returning from the Great War were recruited to bear arms against the steel workers. As reported in The New York World:
”In the Pittsburgh district thousands of deputy sheriffs have been recruited at several of the larger plants. The Pennsylvania State Constabulary has been concentrated at commanding points. At other places the authorities have organized bodies of war veterans as special officers…It is as though preparations were made for actual war.�
Many of these workers were immigrant laborers who were distrusted and discriminated against as un-American radicals. Indeed, many of the workers allies were radicals � IWW, anarchists, socialist � who were willing to raise their voices for the beleaguered working man when all the forces of “patriotic� America were arrayed against them. Coming at the time of the oppressive Palmer Raids and the absolute nadir of First Amendment rights in America, having radical allies allowed the press to use deceitful scare tactics against all of the strikers.
With press, police, and government all supporting the steel barons against their workers, and the authorities using deadly force against them with impunity, the great steel strike of 1919 was doomed to failure. Yet it laid the groundwork for how an industry-wide strike could be conducted, and prepared the way for the successful actions that came a generation later when the Great Depression changed the way America responded to workers demanding a fair shake. As William Z. Foster, one of the principal organizers of the 1919 strike wrote:
”In 1919, after the steel trusts, by the use of troops, gunmen, scabs, lying newspapers and mass starvation, had violently broken the strike of 365,000 steel workers and lashed these oppressed toilers back into the mills, I ventured to forecast…the great steel strike of 1919 will seem only a preliminary skirmish when compared with the tremendous battles that are bound to come.�...more
”My address is like my shoes: it travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.�
”No matter what you fight, don’t be ladylike!�
She was ”My address is like my shoes: it travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.�
”No matter what you fight, don’t be ladylike!�
She was called “the most dangerous woman in America.� Mary G. Harris, aka Mother Jones, was a former school teacher and dress maker, who, at the age of sixty, in 1897, became a union organizer, community organizer, and progressive activist. She was a cofounder of the International Workers of the World � the famous Wobblies anarchists union, and her activism was pivotal in bringing about bans on child labor.
This excellent children’s book introduces this labor hero to kids, using one of Mother Jones� most famous actions � her organizing, in 1903 , a march of mill children from Philadelphia, through New York City, and to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York. This dramatic action drew attention to the plight of young children forced to labor hard in factories and mines all day, and helped to jumpstart child labor reform in America. Mother Jones narrates the story, speaking plainly and directly to children, explaining the evils of the system that existed and what she did to combat it.
The artwork is attractive. The text is easy and does not condensed to children. The message of standing up and combating the greed of the unfettered free market and the evils it causes is important. And introducing kids to a true, progressive labor hero they almost certainly won’t learn about in school is invaluable. ...more
Excluding the “Other� has been a great Achilles heel in the history of the American labor movement. Whether it was skilled workers excluding unskilledExcluding the “Other� has been a great Achilles heel in the history of the American labor movement. Whether it was skilled workers excluding unskilled, whites excluding blacks, men excluding women, natives excluding immigrants, or hetero excluding queer, it detracts from their potential strength. Beyond that, it allows Capital to use a divide and conquer strategy to defeat Labor goals.
Kim Kelly’s book, Fight Like Hell, focuses on the stories of those who have often been excluded from the mainstream of the Labor Movement. It is full of short histories and anecdotes of women, Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, and LGBTQ union activists and groups, all the way back to the early 19th century. The stories are sometimes of victories against the odds, sometimes about valiant fights waged and lost, but all show the potential power of all these othered groups, and demonstrate their place in Labor history. She also focuses on organizing in difficult and non traditional industries, such as farming, domestic work, sex work, and even prison labor.
The book is organized thematically rather than chronologically. I found this a bit jarring, as stories would be jumping multiple decades in time backwards and forwards again, sometimes feeling unconnected despite the loose themes. Also, the tone of the book was much like the rah rah atmosphere of a union meeting firing up the members for a rally rather than a straight historical rendering.
These quibbles aside, this is an important book. By emphasizing the stories of those often excluded both by society at large and by organized labor, Kelly puts them back into Labor’s story. She explodes the stereotype image of labor as just some old white guy in a hard hat. This is absolutely necessary for the Labor Movement to succeed going forward. Everyone is needed in the fight. Divisive infighting and exclusion based on fear and prejudice cannot be tolerated. We all get there together, or none of us get there....more
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