Friday, March 04, 2016
Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously
What was the conflict between Marx and Bakunin, philosophically speaking?
Most basically, it came down to the role of the state in revolution. Marx had theorized that society would progress from capitalism, the political and economic dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capitalist owning class), to socialism, the political and economic dictatorship of the proletariat (working class), to communism, which would be classless and stateless. Marx's vision of this transitional socialism entailed a revolutionary state, controlled by the working class. I'd note here that Marx did not use the term "dictatorship" as we now do, to mean autocratic rule, but instead theorized that every society is controlled by a certain class, which is the one that controls productive property, and that the state effectively serves the interest of this class. This is why he theorized that there must be a dictatorship of the entire working class to achieve communism (which would be stateless).Bakunin, the most influential anarchist of his time, saw the state as a fundamentally authoritarian institution. He held that the abolition of the state was necessary for the true abolition of capitalism and the exploitation and alienation that went with it. On this topic, he wrote, “How can a free and equal society arise from an authoritarian organization? It is impossible.” To Bakunin, the state was not a tool that could be used to reach a stateless society, and any such attempt would lead to a dependence upon that state. While Marxists contended that anarchists could never succeed in the long term, anarchists held that Marxist revolution would not lead to a truly free society.
This difference was really brought to the fore in the aftermath of the Paris Commune of 1871, a two month long revolution in which the workers of Paris seized control of their city, raised the red flag, and instituted the most radical program ever devised at that point in history. See this post for more specifics. Both hailed it as the first great working class revolution, but because of the way the Commune was run, anarchists claimed that it was stateless and Marxists claimed that it represented a revolutionary state in transition to communism. Marx also held that the Commune ought to have centralized power, which put him at odds with Bakunin and the anarchists. Ultimately, this is what pushed the two over the edge, leading to the expulsion of Bakunin and the anarchists from the International Workingmen's Association.
In addition to the role of the state, a major difference was that while Marx was a communist, Bakunin was a collectivist. Anarchist communism would later become the dominant strain of anarchism after Kropotkin's works at the end of the 19th century, but at this point, collectivism dominated organized anarchism. While communism holds "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", collectivism does not abolish currency and allows for some variation in wealth. However, at this point historically, this difference was not so important as the difference in revolutionary methods. Both were ultimately advocating collective ownership and direction of productive property by the workers, and the ultimate goal of a classless and stateless society.
A surprisingly accurate description of anarchism from TVTropes
"Anarchy is, and always has been, a romance. It is also clearly the only morally sensible way to run the world." —Alan MooreOf all the political philosophies that have existed throughout history, anarchism is perhaps the most misunderstood. With general impressions ranging from the idea that Anarchy Is Chaos to scary images of Bomb-Throwing Anarchists from popular fiction, what most probably don't realise is there's actually a wealth of complex and multilayered ideas associated with anarchism that have had an impact on radical politics, the arts, and even mainstream culture.
The definition of anarchism to most people means "belief the state is bad and shouldn't exist." However, while all anarchists are anti-statists, it is not the only or, in most cases, even the primary part of their ideology.
Anarchism is the belief that rulership as a whole, not just the state, should not exist note and that people should instead organize their social relations and institutions though voluntary cooperation without hierarchies of power. So what characterises anarchism is not anti-statism so much as anti-authoritarianism. This means that most anarchists would not welcome a reduction in state power if it meant an increase of other kinds of authoritarianism as a result. For example, privatising a public health service may weaken the state, but increase the power of corporations, and so anarchists would probably oppose doing so, even though generally speaking, they don't support state or private management of things and instead push for voluntary, localised, and cooperative institutions organised from the bottom-up through decentralised networks and run via processes of participatory democracy and workplace self-management.
Another way of thinking about anarchism is that it's "democracy without the state" or "socialism when it occurs on a voluntary basis". This tends to confuse many who
(1) associate the word democracy with representative government; and
(2) especially those who associate the word socialism with statism.In fact, the word democracy originally meant direct democracy, like in Ancient Greece, and the word socialism originally referred to a number of economic systems in which economic institutions were run by those who actually worked in them. It's the earlier meanings of both words that anarchists use when talking about them. As well as the original political meaning of the word libertarian, which, despite its modern Anglo-American use to mean laissez-faire capitalist, was actually first used by anarchist socialists to mean "anti-authoritarian". A frequently used synonym for social anarchism is libertarian socialism.
In addition to the systems of centralised power found in statism and capitalism, anarchists also support dissolving all forms of social hierarchy and domination (i.e., rulership) - such as sexism, racism, queerphobia, ableism, speciesism, and the domination of nature - and restructuring society on a decentralised and horizontalist basis.
There are two main categories of political anarchist thought, divided chiefly by what kind of economic system they want to build.
Market Anarchists want a stateless free market economy made up of producer and consumer cooperatives and self-employed professionals instead of private corporations and wage-labour. While once very popular, especially in America, market anarchism has ended up becoming a minority in the larger anarchist canon.
Social Anarchists, on the other hand, want what could be called a "free commons", note in which systems of decentralised and localised planning of the economy (by directly-democratic popular assemblies and worker-controlled enterprises) replace traditional market relations. In terms of numbers, this is by far the most prominent anarchist tradition and is what most people are referring to when they talk about "anarchism" without prefixes.
Both of these in turn are sub-divided into four overall proposals for different economic systems, each associated primarily with a different anarchist "founding father", with the first two being forms of market anarchism and the later two social anarchism:
Mutualist anarchism (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon)
Individualist anarchism (Benjamin Tucker)
Collectivist anarchism (Mikhail Bakunin)
Communist anarchism (Peter Kropotkin)
Despite their differences, they all share a social commitment to the ideal of organising things on the basis of "voluntary, non-hierarchical cooperation".
Anarchism was extremely popular in labour movements around the world in the late 19th and early 20th century, so much so that for a time it surpassed Marxism as the principle philosophy of working class struggles. Historian Benidict Anderson makes the case that anarchism was in fact the first "anti-systemic" movement that was fully global in scale, having influence in areas Marxism didn't reach for decades, like Japan, the Philippines, Latin America, Egypt, and Southern Africa.
Its popularity waned somewhat after the Russian Revolution in which Marxists took power for the first time. Then after a last hurrah in the late 1930s, in which there was an anarchist revolution in Spain and Catalonia, it flickered out in terms of appeal in the Global North except for occasional influences within environmental, anti-war, and student movements, though it still maintained an active presence in other parts of the world. After a long time in a relative political wilderness, anarchism has seen something of a resurgence in worldwide political and social movements since the 1999 World Trade Organisation protests in Seattle over corporate-led globalisation policies, and especially since the 2011 "squares movements" around the world like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.
The anthropologist David Graeber has opined that most social movements in the present day - structured through horizontal networks of cooperation rather than top-down hierarchies - are basically anarchist in their principles, even if they don't necessary use the word to describe themselves.
For those new to anarchist ideas, there's been a massive project aimed at explaining everything about (social) anarchist theory, practice, and history called An Anarchist FAQ available at this link, and a series of introductory videos on social anarchist/left-libertarian ideas is available here and here. Some good book-length intros can be found in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism by Peter Marshall, Anarchy in Action by Colin Ward, Red Emma Speaks by Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Its Aspirarions by Cindy Milstein, and A Living Spirit of Revolt by Ziga Vodovnik.
(Note: As social anarchism is by far the majority tendency within anarchism as a whole, most of the following article will address primarily what social anarchists believe, but with occasional explanations of what market anarchists desire when the two differ.note )
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
Not Just Free Speech, but Freedom Itself
Individual "rights" are ultimately a liberal red herring dangled in front of the working class to give the illusion of liberty: here are the rights you have, because we allow you to have them.
That's just my opinion, though. If you're interested in understanding an additional anarchist perspective on civil liberties, I highly recommend the essay Not Just Free Speech, but Freedom Itself: A Critique of Civil Liberties. It's a short read, but here's a particularly relevant excerpt:
The discourse of free speech in democracy presumes that no significant imbalances of power exist, and that the primary mechanism of change is rational discussion. In fact, a capitalist elite controls most resources, and power crystallizes upward along multiple axes of oppression. Against this configuration, it takes a lot more than speech alone to open the possibility of social change.There can be no truly free speech except among equals—among parties who are not just equal before the law, but who have comparable access to resources and equal say in the world they share. Can an employee really be said to be as free to express herself as her boss, if the latter can take away her livelihood? Are two people equally free to express their views when one owns a news network and the other cannot even afford to photocopy fliers? In the US, where donations to political candidates legally constitute speech, the more money you have, the more “free speech” you can exercise. As the slogan goes, freedom isn’t free—and nowhere is that clearer than with speech.
Contrary to the propaganda of democracy, ideas alone have no intrinsic force. Our capacity to act on our beliefs, not just to express them, determines how much power we have. In this sense, the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor is strikingly apt: you need capital to participate, and the more you have, the greater your ability to enact the ideas you buy into. Just as the success of a few entrepreneurs and superstars is held up as proof that the free market rewards hard work and ingenuity, the myth of the marketplace of ideas suggests that the capitalist system persists because everyone—billionaire and bellboy alike—agrees it is the best idea.
…So Long as You Don’t Do Anything
But what if, despite the skewed playing field, someone manages to say something that threatens to destabilize the power structure? If history is any indication, it swiftly turns out that freedom of expression is not such a sacrosanct right after all. In practice, we are permitted free speech only insofar as expressing our views changes nothing. The premise that speech alone cannot be harmful implies that speech is precisely that which is ineffectual: therefore anything effectual is not included among one’s rights.
During World War I, the Espionage Act criminalized any attempt to “cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, [or] refusal of duty” or to obstruct recruiting for the armed forces. President Woodrow Wilson urged the bill’s passage because he believed antiwar activity could undermine the US war effort. Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman were arrested under this law for printing anarchist literature that opposed the war. Likewise, the Anarchist Exclusion Act and the subsequent Immigration Act were used to deport or deny entry to any immigrant “who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government.” Berkman, Goldman, and hundreds of other anarchists were deported under these acts. There are countless other examples showing that when speech can threaten the foundation of state power, even the most democratic government doesn’t hesitate to suppress it.
Thus, when the state presents itself as the defender of free speech, we can be sure that this is because our rulers believe that allowing criticism will strengthen their position more than suppressing it could. Liberal philosopher and ACLU member Thomas Emerson saw that freedom of speech “can act as a kind of ‘safety valve’ to let off steam when people might otherwise be bent on revolution.” Therein lies the true purpose of the right to free speech in the US.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Why the State Exists
"The State exists to protect the interests of its members, it was formed with that explicit purpose. We can look at the formation of the US government as an example. The authors of the US constitution were the wealthiest men in the North American colonies and they constructed the US government to protect their own wealth. Consider how only land owning white men could vote, this limited political participation to the minority of property owners. Direct political participation was extremely difficult, only rarely could people vote directly for those running for office. By restricting the political power only to those who shared their own interests, the founders of the US State ensured that it would protect their property for the foreseeable future."Since the State only serves the minority, it must prevent the majority from forming a government which is truly democratic. This requires violence since meaningful political participation is impossible. By making peaceful revolution impossible, the only way to prevent revolution is brutal state oppression. There is a constant power struggle between the people and the State. Over time the power of the State grows since this is one of the best ways to preserve itself."
Source: /u/content404
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The Collectivists were right: we're not as selfish as we think
A study by the Common Cause Foundation, due to be published next month, reveals two transformative findings. The first is that a large majority of the 1,000 people they surveyed – 74% – identifies more strongly with unselfish values than with selfish values. This means that they are more interested in helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness and justice than in money, fame, status and power. The second is that a similar majority – 78% – believes others to be more selfish than they really are. In other words, we have made a terrible mistake about other people’s minds.
Monday, October 19, 2015
The religion of capitalism
Having become merchandise themselves, workers consume merchandise to exert power the only way they can. Once there is nothing to compare it against, purchasing ceases to be a necessary evil and becomes a sacred act; in the religion of capitalism, in which financial power is equated with social value and spending is thus proof of worth, it is a form of communion. The store is the temple in which the act of buying affirms the consumer's place in society. Much of our leisure time is made up of rituals in which spending money itself is the point: it is what qualifies an activity as having a good time or going on a date.
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
What is dialectical materialism?
A dialectic is a conflict or a contradiction.Hegel's philosophy is applied to history. He thought that history was the process and formation of what he called a 'spirit' which is like the sum of knowledge, truth , reason. We could say 'zeitgeist' which is the spirit of the age. Hegel asserted that the spirit of one age (thesis) eventually comes against or creates its opposite (antithesis) and the clash of the two creates a new age (synthesis). And the conflict between these forms the new thesis which meets its antithesis forms a synthesis and so on until humanity reaches the pinnacle of absolute truth.
This idea is a lot like religions or other philosophies like stoicism as it makes it easier to deal with evil and horrible events because you can view it as progress towards a greater future. Marx was a Hegelian which means he followed this line of thinking about the dialectic. But instead of applying it to an abstract concept of history, he applied it to matter (stuff that exists). He was a materialist. Strictly, he placed more emphasis on the influence of material things - like the distribution of goods, resources and money. Marx saw a disparity in ownership and control of these goods. On one side he saw the upper classes, the 'Bourgeoisie', who were the owners of most of the resources (factories during industrialization) and on the other side he saw the lower classes who had fewer goods and powers (the 'proletariat').
Using Hegel's method, Marx interpreted this material relationship in terms of the dialectic (conflict or contradiction). With Hegel, the spirit of the age would go in conflict with another new spirit of the age until a new spirit of the age emerges better informed to tackle new conflicts and so on. With Marx, the 'spirit of the age' is seen as systems defining our material relationship with one another (how we transfer goods between ourselves). For Marx, the first spirit of the age would have been Feudalism which was a system of monarchs and peasants. The opposite of that would be capitalism which is a system of owners of goods (principally the 'means of production') and the people who worked for them. Theoretically, out of this conflict of thesis and antithesis would emerge as the synthesis which Marx called Communism. Communism is a system in which everyone owns the goods and everyone contributes according to their ability and takes according to their needs.
So in sum, Hegel's idea was highly abstract. It laid out that ideas go from being thesis (in itself) to antithesis (out of itself) to synthesis (in and for itself).
Friday, September 26, 2014
Why I take exception to being called "a liberal."
"All that is well and good. We can work with misguided reformists. The problem is liberals' insistence that everyone else abide by their rules. Their privilege and authority issues ensure that they will try to control every movement they are involved in. They will gravitate to leadership positions (if there aren't any, they will create some), they will insist on controlling the message, and they will denounce any tactics they disagree with.
"Liberals are cop worshippers and politician's boot-licks. They are every movement's wet blankets, trying to push everyone back on the sidewalk and back in line when things are just about to get interesting. They are snitches and backstabbers. They will try to hold us back until we are unstoppable and then they will betray us."
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Fundamental change requires education.
Friday, September 05, 2014
Anarchism is not prescriptive.
First, I want to tangent a little bit. Anarchy is not a society that we can predict is going to exist. It's not a formula that we follow as a society that will lead us to a utopian existence. Anarchism is at its core a critique of the State, Capitalism, and hierarchical organization. As an ideology, it is the practice of decentralization of political, economic, and social power.The misunderstanding with anarchism is that it does offer solutions and alternatives to the criticisms it gives, and in doing so it creates an illusion of an end-goal. Instead, each tendency and current of anarchism is a complementary tactic on decentralizing power. For example, Marx criticized capitalism for being exploitative; Kropotkin develops mutualism as a way of allowing workers to take direct control of the means of production and yet maintain the competitiveness of capitalist markets and the freedom to control one's labor. Communism criticizes capitalism for exploiting the workers; anarcho-communism criticizes capitalism for exploiting the workers and the State for perpetuating capitalism and violent social stratification; anarcho-syndicalism solves both of these criticisms as an anarchist tactic. The unions seize the means of production which allows them to decide what to do with their own labor; consensus direct democracy decision making. However, it also doesn't require the state to seize and distribute the means of production. The misconception is that anarchism is an ideology that hopes to spread to reach a critical mass, after which a majority of the working class seizes their own means of production. Instead, during times of revolutionary upheaval such as Anarchist Catalonia, we see glimpses of anarchism because anarchism is the assault on illegitimate hierarchies.
So, you can see a vision of mutualist societies in looking at present-day worker co-ops like Mondragon Corp and Valve (video game). You can see anarcho-syndicalism in the C.N.T. and the I.W.W. Less-so in the liberal trade unions like the AFL-CIO. You can see insurrectionary anarchism in Robin Hood and in bank robbers like Bonnano and the Conspiracy Cells of Fire living as outlaws in direct resistance to the state, or a even a biker gang. Life would differ depending on where you live. If you live in New York City, maybe you'd see taxis and bus drivers as part of a transportation union; you'd see Wall Street turned into some ironic piece of socialist art; if you live in the rural midwest you might see a return of a Wild-West sort of Wyatt Earp/Seth Bullock-type sheriff with a guardian, rather than enforcer, role, (I hope so!) with mostly lawlessness but banditry would be easily beaten by solidarity.
This is a much more in-depth explanation of what I usually tell people, which is that anarchism is not a goal, it is a journey -- it is a never-ending critique of power.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Come on, pal, the clock's running.
A: Well, that'll do for openers. I think I can sum up my religious feelings in a couple of paragraphs. First: I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life -- in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice. I'm not unmindful of man's seeming need for faith; I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel's. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle. The witch doctor tries to convince us that we have to ask God for help, to spell out to him what we need, even to bribe him with prayer or cash on the line. Well, I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It's not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him anyplace. And if that sounds heretical, my source is pretty good: Matthew, Five to Seven, The Sermon on the Mount.
Q: You haven't found any answers for yourself in organized religion?
A: There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions. Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem. Over 25,000 organized religions flourish on this planet, but the followers of each think all the others are miserably misguided and probably evil as well. In India they worship white cows, monkeys and a dip in the Ganges. The Moslems accept slavery and prepare for Allah, who promises wine and revirginated women. And witch doctors aren't just in Africa. If you look in the L.A. papers of a Sunday morning, you'll see the local variety advertising their wares like suits with two pairs of pants.
Q: Hasn't religious faith just as often served as a civilizing influence?
A: Remember that leering, cursing lynch mob in Little Rock reviling a meek, innocent little 12-year-old Negro girl as she tried to enroll in public school? Weren't they -- or most of them -- devout churchgoers? I detest the two-faced who pretend liberality but are practiced bigots in their own mean little spheres. I didn't tell my daughter whom to marry, but I'd have broken her back if she had had big eyes for a bigot. As I see it, man is a product of his conditioning, and the social forces which mold his morality and conduct -- including racial prejudice -- are influenced more by material things like food and economic necessities than by the fear and awe and bigotry generated by the high priests of commercialized superstition. Now don't get me wrong. I'm for decency -- period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out.
Q: But aren't such spiritual hypocrites in a minority? Aren't most Americans fairly consistent in their conduct within the precepts of religious doctrine?
A: I've got no quarrel with men of decency at any level. But I can't believe that decency stems only from religion. And I can't help wondering how many public figures make avowals of religious faith to maintain an aura of respectability. Our civilization, such as it is, was shaped by religion, and the men who aspire to public office anyplace in the free world must make obeisance to God or risk immediate opprobrium. Our press accurately reflects the religious nature of our society, but you'll notice that it also carries the articles and advertisements of astrology and hokey Elmer Gantry revivalists. We in America pride ourselves on freedom of the press, but every day I see, and so do you, this kind of dishonesty and distortion not only in this area but in reporting -- about guys like me, for instance, which is of minor importance except to me; but also in reporting world news. How can a free people make decisions without facts? If the press reports world news as they report about me, we're in trouble.
Q: Are you saying that . . .
A: No, wait, let me finish. Have you thought of the chance I'm taking by speaking out this way? Can you imagine the deluge of crank letters, curses, threats and obscenities I'll receive after these remarks gain general circulation? Worse, the boycott of my records, my films, maybe a picket line at my opening at the Sands. Why? Because I've dared to say that love and decency are not necessarily concomitants of religious fervor.
Q: If you think you're stepping over the line, offending your public or perhaps risking economic suicide, shall we cut this off now, erase the tape and start over along more antiseptic lines?
A: No, let's let it run. I've thought this way for years, ached to say these things. Whom have I harmed by what I've said? What moral defection have I suggested? No, I don't want to chicken out now. Come on, pal, the clock's running.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The (sometimes) futility of explaining anarchism.
Skeptic: Well, I might take this whole anarchism idea more seriously if you could give me some reason to think it would work. Can you name me a single viable example of a society which has existed without a government?
Anarchist: Sure. There have been thousands. I could name a dozen just off the top of my head: the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo… All without violence or hierarchy.
Skeptic: But those are all a bunch of primitives! I‟m talking about anarchism in a modern, technological society.
Anarchist: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker's self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy…
Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I'm talking about whole societies.
Anarchist: Well, it's not like people haven't tried. Look at the Paris Commune, the free states in Ukraine and Shimin, the 1936 revolution in Spain…
Skeptic: Yeah, and look what happened to those guys! They all got killed!
The dice are loaded. You can't win. Because when the skeptic says “society,” what he really means is “state,” even “nation-state.” Since no one is going to produce an example of an anarchist state — that would be a contradiction in terms — what we're really being asked for is an example of a modern nation-state with the government somehow plucked away: a situation in which the government of Canada, to take a random example, has been overthrown, or for some reason abolished itself, and no new one has taken its place but instead all former Canadian citizens begin to organize themselves into libertarian collectives. Obviously this would never be allowed to happen. In the past, whenever it even looked like it might — here, the Paris commune and Spanish civil war are excellent examples — the politicians running pretty much every state in the vicinity have been willing to put their differences on hold until those trying to bring such a situation about had been rounded up and shot.
There is a way out, which is to accept that anarchist forms of organization would not look anything like a state. That they would involve an endless variety of communities, associations, networks, projects, on every conceivable scale, overlapping and intersecting in any way we could imagine, and possibly many that we can't. Some would be quite local, others global. Perhaps all they would have in common is that none would involve anyone showing up with weapons and telling everyone else to shut up and do what they were told. And that, since anarchists are not actually trying to seize power within any national territory, the process of one system replacing the other will not take the form of some sudden revolutionary cataclysm—the storming of a Bastille, the seizing of a Winter Palace — but will necessarily be gradual, the creation of alternative forms of organization on a world scale, new forms of communication, new, less alienated ways of organizing life, which will, eventually, make currently existing forms of power seem stupid and beside the point. That in turn would mean that there are endless examples of viable anarchism: pretty much any form of organization would count as one, so long as it was not imposed by some higher authority, from a klezmer band to the international postal service.
– Excerpt from David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
Friday, April 29, 2011
Mass amnesia makes Americans forget the story behind May Day
April 26, 2007
May Day: The holiday of the workers. In days gone by, when men, women and children often worked 10 or more hours a day, seven days a week, May Day was an assertion on the part of wage-slaves that they were sovereign human beings with control over their own lives and destinies. They celebrated the day with marches of tens and hundreds of thousands throughout the world.
May Day was an expression of the international solidarity of the working class. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," was not just a slogan. It was a battle cry in the war between classes. Their marches and rallies, with fiery speeches, impassioned poetry and stirring anthems, gave them a sense of their collective strength. It was an act of defiance of the combined forces of employers and public authorities. Often their gatherings were brutally attacked by police or thugs with clubs and guns.
Many of us have grandparents or great-grandparents who participated in these observances. Few of us acknowledge or are even aware of this inspiring part of our family histories. We Americans suffer from mass amnesia of the remarkable and some times glorious history of workers' struggles for liberty of expression and social justice. Who now remembers May Day?
Although not often taught in American history classes, May Day originated in the United States during the campaign for an eight-hour day. The Knights of Labor, the nascent American Federation of Labor and various anarchist groups designated May 1, 1886, for nationwide demonstrations for the eight-hour goal. An incident which occurred several days later in Chicago made this the beginning of a global workers' movement. Following a clash between strikers and police in which several workers were killed, a protest meeting was held in Haymarket Square.
When police attacked the gathering, a bomb was thrown, killing several officers. In the trial of anarchists (who were not accused of the bombing, but for advocating violence) which followed, eight were found guilty and four subsequently executed. These "Haymarket martyrs" quickly became revered heroes of labor movements throughout the world.
With this tragic episode in the class war in mind, the International Socialist Congress meeting in Paris in 1889 designated May 1, 1890, as an eight-hour holiday to be observed by workers in all countries. An increasingly conservative Samuel Gompers and AF of L had by the mid-1890s distanced themselves from May Day and embraced the legally sanctioned Labor Day, which was observed the first Monday in September. Coming from radical backgrounds, Finns, Slavs, East European Jews, Italians and other immigrants found their cherished May Day opposed not only by capitalists but often by American workers as well. Despite being denounced as "foreign born reds," they kept the torch of May Day idealism burning for another generation.
The response of the "bosses," political and economic, was twofold: to allay the anger of the workers, measures were taken to ameliorate the worst abuses of the capitalist system; while extreme repression was used to silence the most vocal and active labor advocates. The case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchist immigrants, electrocuted on Aug. 23, 1927, following a blatantly biased trial, is the most heinous example of the latter.
However, the ideal of May Day had already been shattered by the collision of international solidarity of the "proletariat" with the fervid nationalism resulting from World War I. Patriotism trumped class consciousness, and millions of workers killed each other in the name of the fatherland. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik Revolution which appeared to fulfill the vision of a collective republic turned out to be a Trojan horse in the socialist camp. The Leninist-Stalinist regime proved to be a ruthless dictatorship presiding over state capitalism. Among the earliest and most passionate opponents of Communist Russia were socialists and anarchists whose comrades were being liquidated by the Bolsheviks.
The aspiration for the unity of workers was shattered by these developments.
In the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930s did not usher in communism but the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which saved capitalism and laid the basis for a welfare state.
May Day was hijacked by the Soviet Union with its displays of military prowess in Red Square. The association of May Day with Soviet Communism has given it a bad name to this day.
In this age of globalization, when workers are pitted against each other, across oceans and continents, we have returned to conditions of pitiless exploitation of human beings. If greed ever was constrained by patriotism, it certainly is not today. The quest for profits knows no inhibitions by national ideologies or loyalties. Yes, we are involved in a class war, a war of oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the corrupted political institutions, against the workers and consumers.
We, the American working people, remain beguiled by symbols, the flag, the Fourth of July, the Thanksgiving turkey. It is time to revisit May Day in the spirit in which it was conceived over a hundred years ago. Only an international labor movement can hope to match the prowess of the amoral trans-national capitalist system. Freeing ourselves from the sordid history which stained the banner of May Day, we need to raise a cleansed, purified standard on which is emblazoned once again: "Workers of the World Unite!"
Rudolph J. Vecoli is professor emeritus of history and former director of the Immigration History Research Center University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He lives in St. Paul, Minn.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Why Haiti is the way it is.
Once the slaves of Haiti won their freedom through war and revolution, the U.S. and European powers still refused to recognize Haiti's independence as a nation, and made that known by imposing embargoes and blockades. The distaste for a liberated Haiti was likely rooted in the belief that supporting the newly freed country would send the wrong message to their own slaves: if you fight, you could be free. Those embargoes crippled Haiti's ability to bounce back from the devastation wrought by warring with 3 nations trying to maintain them as a slave-state. The French-led embargo continued until almost 1830, when it was dissolved only under the condition that Haiti reimburse France for the loss of their property: their slaves. The value was set at 150 million francs, close to the annual budget of France at the time. Due to this unjust debt being forced on Haiti, the country was plunged even further into poverty, so much so that 80% of Haiti's national budget went towards debt payments.
When the U.S. decided to flex its might in the western hemisphere, one of the ways they showed it was by sending in the Marines in 1915 to plunder and occupy Haiti. The Marines went straight to the Haiti national bank and took all their gold reserves, moving them to U.S. soil. After we stole their gold, we forced them to rewrite their constitution, allowing for the occupation, foreign ownership of Haitian land, and numerous other changes designed only to benefit us. The Haitians resisted this occupation through a series of revolts, each of which was crushed by the U.S. military by murdering revolt leaders, razing entire villages, and killing somewhere between 20-30,000 Haitians. Then, in the early 1930s, we abandoned our occupation of Haiti, leaving in power the brutal, U.S.-trained Haitian National Army to oppress and control the former slave populace.
In the late '50s Papa Doc Duvalier came to power through a fraudulent election and brought in his own army of thugs, the Tontons Macoutes. Duvalier's tyranny killed roughly 50,000 Haitians, and guess who supported his rule? That's right, the U.S. government. When Papa Doc Duvalier died, the U.S. stationed warships off the coast of Haiti as a display of force to insure a smooth transition of power to Papa Doc's son, Jean-Francois. Jean-Francois Duvalier was closely associated with and supported the U.S. "American Plan," which explicitly aimed to drive people into shantytowns and get them to work in assembly plants set up by the U.S.
Jean-Francois continued his reign until the mid 1980s when a series of uprisings forced the U.S. to extract him and give him sanctuary in France, so that we could keep control of the country through the U.S.-trained Haitian National Army and a series of military juntas. In 1991 a priest and member of the anti-Duvalier movement by the name of Jean Aristide was elected as president. This new president didn't make any noise about completely severing the power connections of the United States, but he made it known through fierce policy debate that he wasn't going to bend to the will of the U.S. government nor the local ruling class elite that supported U.S. policy. After less than a year in office, the CIA worked with the Haitian military to stage a coup and eliminate Aristide's support structure. This was done through repression by military soldiers and Duvalier's Macoutes. Thousands of Aristide's supporters were slaughtered, hundreds of thousands went into hiding and almost another hundred thousand fled the country.
All this intervention still didn't give the U.S. government what it wanted, so a few years later the U.S. returned Aristide to power, along with 20,000 U.S. troops to protect the paramilitary squads that had been put in place during Aristide's exile, and to train them again with even harsher techniques of oppression. The 20,000 U.S. troops stayed for a year, leaving only when Aristide agreed to the Governor's Island accords, which stated that he must stop resisting U.S. plans for Haiti. He stayed true to his agreement for the most part, but kept fighting for any concessions he could, which the U.S. grew tired of, and in 2004 another coup was organized by the CIA and the International Republican Institute--Aristide and his family were kidnapped and put on a plane for the Central African Republic. Within a few days U.S. soldiers once again patrolled the capital of Haiti and before long a new government was created, complete with new attacks on the people of Haiti, many of which were perpetrated by U.S. forces. A few short months after that the U.S. troops were replaced with U.N. soldiers, mainly Brazilians, who have been critized by human rights groups for summary executions. From 2004 until the recent earthquake, there has been no change in Haiti's structure of government or oppression of its people.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
That's all, folks.
2002/08/29 05:46
I sitll haven't come to terms with the fact that it's been getting worse each time and will continue to do so until my treatment is over. That's probably the most difficult thing for me to swallow in all of this. With each treatment, I ask myself how it could possibly make me feel worse, and with each treatment, I find out.
Oh well. C'est la vie.
On a lighter note, I had a wonderful motorcycle ride this past Sunday with two good friends of mine, Matt and Tom. We rode up Page Mill Road, and stopped at the intersection of Page Mill/Alpine Rd. and Skyline Road to take a break and relax a bit to soak in the beauty of it all.
A couple of days before that I got to hang out with Jessica, which is enjoyable every time I do. I really did miss hanging out with her, as she has been such a good friend to me for so very long, and is just overall a really good person. I took a picture of her that night, I guess she wasn't too happy with it.
I also went out to lunch with her on Tuesday before going to chemotherapy; I think my decision of where to go might've been a bad idea, considering the fact that I ate a hamburger, which was the first time in a while that I'd had red meat. It should be enough to say that it was pretty hard on my stomach, and it definitely had its effect during my chemo treatment. Luckily, my timing in getting to the bathroom was impeccable, especially considering that I had to get my IV unplugged from the wall which was no easy feat.
Azitta went with me to chemo this time, which did wonders for me. It also helped me to deal with my mom, as she can be quite over-bearing and over-protective at times.
Well, all the time, actually. I just normally have the energy and patience to be able to deal with it, but chemo drains all that away. It makes me feel like I'm an octogenarian, slowly withering away into nothingness.
Damnit, I was trying to keep this light-hearted. That just shows the frame of mind I'm in right now, I suppose. Why force it, eh?
On that note .. end transmission.
2002/08/21 19:20
Excised and anatomised, deviscerated disarray
The torso diverged with pride
Deftly amputated, evulsed limbs now defunct
The trunk imbrued, tatty stumps used as lugs
For a chondrin puzzle so quaint
Head and body decollate
A heaving mass so quiescent...
Scattered and scrambled, your teasement grows
- A bloody caricature to make whole
A squirming grisly jigsaw, detrital fragments fit so snug
- That missing piece will leave you stumped
Totally disassembled, nicely sliced and diced
- A human being this once resembled
Real cranium teaser, carved from flesh and bone
- So mystifying...
Battered and diffused with placating blows
- A human jigsaw to make whole
A sequacious pattern which once fitted so snug
- Joining together each dubious lump
Ravaged disassembly, neatly cubed and diced
- A cold mannequin once reassembled
Astute brain teaser, incorporate flesh and bone
- So mortifying...
An incessant game - methodically made
With each cumulative piecing - of commensated meat...
Bi-manual reconstruction, eldritch problem complete
A convened effigy
A pathological toy, each chunk rigorously
Inter mortis locking, as you pathogenically rot
Such a perplexing task
To fit the remains in the casket
Uliginous mess so quiescent...
An incessant game - methodically made
With each cumulative piece - of commensated meat...
