Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History 1880s American An

As an industrial giant at the forefront of a Major Economic revolution, and according to his ideological worldview we should have produced radical socialist and communist movements. A couple of things were wrong with that comment. There was an american left. There was a socialist party. It was even winning elections on a city, state, and ultimately a couple of congressman. There were real communists. 1860, there were communists clubs in several major American Cities come marxist communist clubs. First International Working association was at home in the u. S. , and indeed for a decade there was a coalition of european socialists and coming , some american reformers of whom figured in my book on american reform. The sociologist was less concerned about this, but there were extremes on the right in america. Arch conservatives, libertarians differed from anarchists i will lump them in with anarchists in a bit, but extreme libertarians who believed private property was sanctified you will be reading some of these folks for this weeks assignments. It s of the alt right today. In Theku Klux Klan and organizations that succeeded the clan. America did have extremes. They just did not quite fit the european model. Also i think this perception of the german sociologist was embedded in american historiography after world war ii. The most powerful Historical School in the 1950s to the 1960s was the socalled consensus school of historians and also literary analysts. They argued i mentioned i think in passing earlier they argued that america was born , that america began without the extremes of europe, with out aristocracies and so on, and on one level glorified that. America is better off not having the struct of ideologies like coming is more socialism, but there was also a negative view that europe had better art and europe had better food than the u. S. Because it had an aristocracy. It had an american exceptionalism argument. America is different than the rest of the world in black and lack of radicalism was part of that difference. This was designed to refute. Going to do today is not try to cover all of the types of extremism in your readings this week. I am going to just pick just one of those types, and that is anarchism. I am taking anarchism for a variety of reasons. One is as a historian, i am appalled by the use of the word anarchist in the press whenever there is a riot, and in my old home town of berkeley, the term was used widely. ,he protesters were anarchists and what they were doing was equating anarchism first with just vandalism, no ideology in particular, which is wrong, and withequating anarchists destructiveness. And indeed the folks they were covering, the news coverage, were doing destructive things. They were trashing stores and things like that. Anarchists of the type i am talking about did do violent acts, at least some schools of anarchy, but those acts of violence were not the kind of looting and vandalism the press was covering, but those acts of violence word targeting particular institutions and particular enemies of the people. There are still some visible scars of fat in parts of america. I think it is still true. It has been five years since i have been in lower manhattan, but if you are down there on wall street and look at the historic j. P. Morgan building, an will see scars left by anarchists bomb. There are still parts of that legacy around, but these were clearly targeted, and that is something that differentiates the real anarchists of the 19th and 20th century from the use of the term today. Picking onon for them does have to do with the use of violence, by radical and reform movements. They come at the anarchists were guilty of a number of bombings, including the wall street one i just mentioned and one i will talk about later today. But then there is a question hanging on present day use of bombings, of which we are seeing , of course. And the question i want to put out is one i hope you pick up in discussion section, and that is what do bombers think they are doing. A list of possible things. I dont like to ask questions without trying to answer them myself. I have done a list which i will share with you after you have but the listons, kept getting longer. In fact, i added another item today. I think there are a lot of answers to the question of violence and why radicals resort to it. Reason for picking on anarchism today is further misunderstanding about 19th and 20th century anarchism, and that is that it was exclusively committed to violence, and that is not true. There were a number of pacifists anarchists and religious anarchists, even some catholic anarchists groups that refuse to use violence, so there is not a one to one connection between anarchism and violence. The real common denominator is hostility to the state, that is to governments of the sort we primarily think of. Believed that governments are the source of oppression. Humans will be free when there are no human governments. That doesnt mean that anybody can do anything, a state of anarchy. What the anarchists are conjuring is an ideal society, a very localized one in which men and women make decisions communally, share property that will, and that be when humans achieve their there isntial, when real justice in the world, so it is a very decentralized view of what Human Society should be like. Excuse me. Want toher thing i dispel in terms of these stereotypes about anarchism really have to do again, i will go back to religion. Anarchism is not defined by atheism. What i am going to do now i will ask for any questions about anarchism. Ok. Right, what i am going to do is take a case study of anarchist anlence and i think it is important case study for a number of reasons. It has to do with an iconic moment in radical history, the iot orled haymarket r affair. The other is that it helps understand not just an act of violence, of revolutionary violence, but also has to do with the state response to it. What happens to american justice when Something Like a bombing occurs . I am going to begin the story with a little biography of the central figure, the one i will trace through this story. His name was Albert Parson born in 1848. Was a descendent of puritans. He had at least one ancestor who fought in the American Revolution. He was sent to texas as a young orphan, center right east coast relatives to live with family out there. He enlisted in the confederate army, pledging because he was 13. Ears old when he did it and here you get one of the many ironies of this mans life, that he was in listing to preserve slavery. This is not a typical anarchists profile. It is not really clear how he became an anarchist. It seems to have been a kind of progression. He went to college in waco, texas in the institution that became baylor. He was horrified by the treatment of africanamericans that he saw in reconstruction texas, the violence directed against them. , whichme a republican was not necessarily a good career move in texas at that point in time. He held some minor public offices, but the failure of reconstruction, the collapse of the republican party, and that was done. Now, he took a strange turn given this genealogy. In 1872, he married. Was namedhe married lucy and she was africanamerican. This was a very unconventional thing in that time period. They were a deeply devoted couple, and after her death, lucy became something of an lecturer,heroine, and writer. The couple went to chicago looking to get out of texas into a different line of work. He first got a job setting type for a printing company. He then became a journalist. 1876, the economy tanked. Ande was a deep depression this was the beginning of what we can trace as his pathway to being an anarchist. Joined a socialist organization. Socialist time of ferment and socialist possibility, and here the core belief of socialism and what attracted him was the notion that workers ought to control the means of production. You have heard this line of reasoning earlier in the course capitalism, people who organize labor were parasites and were siphoning off the profits of those who did the work, so that is my crude version of the socialism that attracted him. There was a transforming event in 1877. It is what i mentioned in passing earlier in the course. A Railroad Strike of the ,altimore and Ohio Railroad Johns Hopkins university in dalman, the great rail strike was precipitated by the railroad cutting salaries by 10 . Keep in mind this was in an economic depression, so here workers were taking a salary hit at the time when they most needed the job and needed the money. East coastparalyzed rail travel for about two weeks, 17 states were affected. There were bloody clashes, 12 people died in one battle in , andmore, 20 in pittsburgh this was the first instance of using federal troops to put down a strike. Broken, that way it was handled, particularly the use of federal troops, radicalized a number of people. It tended to reinforce what socialists and if you communists around were saying about capitalism. Parsons went further to the left. , or at the sat in on, various radical organizations in chicago. , or at least left parties and politicians were making inroads in chicago, where getting elected to the state assembly. So he was part of what seemed to be a radical wave in chicago at the time. Well, he quickly became disillusioned with what was going on. Here was the radical promise, the radical moment, so what happened . One thing that happened was cooption. A thirdparty, the Greenback Party, spring up. Its chief platform had to do with monetary policy, which is not what people like parsons were concerned about. They wanted jobs, they wanted control of the means of production. They did not just want greenback dollars printed. So the Greenback Party siphoned off some of the potential radical support. It willg happened come as a surprise to some of illinois,hicago or but illinois and chicago had a long history of corrupt elections and election fraud. So the major parties found ways of stealing elections that undercut any third party for any radical party. They werent going to win an election. In as further background here, revolutionary anarchism was beginning to cohere, to take shape, between 1883 and the summer of 1886, the time period i am now dealing with. Was aeat event in this grand congress in pittsburgh of somewhateople with different ideological positions, but groups calling themselves social revolutionaries, which would include anarchists, communists, some branches of socialism. Prior to the pittsburgh meeting of 1883 were smaller meetings in chicago and a developing chicago ideal. In this movement, the chicago one, they were really anticipating with the jargon would become. Socialant the union as a locus for revolution. ,hat unions where the vessel the organization, for the revolution. And that struggle was inevitable, that local democratic organizations or revolutionary organizations should create loose federations nationally and internationally. So this is a model of change, a model of revolution, that is ground up, but ground up connected to like organizations, eventually internationally. Two significant things happen in pittsburgh in 1883. The resolutions that came out of re part of your reading for this week. Changet is behind the and the announcements that came in 1883 had to do with something i mentioned on monday when talking about him emma goldman. Of awas the arrival political figure in germany. Somebody who was partly establishment coming a revolutionary becoming a revolutionary. He was jailed for seven years in germany for his radicalism, and he would be jailed in the u. S. Three different times, so he had a lot of chill time to think about his ideology jail time to think about his ideology. To flee germany after publicly suggesting it might be a good thing to assassinate czar alexander the second of russia when he came to germany. That was enough to get him kicked out of germany. Charming. He was charismatic. He was the author of a revolutionary classic. The title of it is revolutionary war science 1885. So you are getting Something Else that is interesting in terms of currents and crosscurrents in this course. Here is a guy rooting revolution in science to create a successful revolution. Practicald some information, like how to make bombs. Got you also have in 1881 the First American anarchists group. Previously most of the anarchism is coming from europe and heavily laden with european immigrants. Was the revolutionary socialistic labour party. It had a small membership of about 300, and most of them were germans, again, even though it was an american group. In 1883dominant group among anarchists was the International Working peoples association. Toch, again, brings us back pittsburgh and the pittsburgh declaration that i hope we put on your reading list for this week. There were five authors of it. One of them was as you would expect, but the other was Albert Parsons. He had come the fourway by 1883, and he represented an american anarchist. And it was probably to his influence that the declaration and other declarations tried to root anarchism, not just in europe, a european import, but as american. The declaration of independence, were trying to broaden the base of anarchism by making it an american thing. Ofe are the key police 188318 86, and you will find them in readings too. That revolution was necessary. Society could not evolve. It would take a revolution to have change. But the wording was very carefully skewed so that it was not necessarily a violent revolution. Anarchists were aware of the connection to violence, so the alighted, but the revolution is central. Ittion to the state was on the list earlier, but something here that seem to move in a somewhat different direction, and that his change through confrontation with italism and with s, ists. Al the social ideal was the one i is ofned earlier, that decisions made through workers organizations, decisions made on the local level. Heregoing to make a caveat in terms of anarchism. Anarchist, the most prominent guy named benjamin tucker, who is on your , did agree that the society conjured by anarchists was the ideal Human Society am a but they believed that private property was sacred and that private property should, could and should, excess under the ness of anarchism. What distinction is there between a libertarian and an anarchist . One on the left and one on the right, but what i just said about benjamin tuckers anarchism sounds very much like a libertarian, so that is up for discussion on your next discussion meeting. The timing of the pittsburgh declaration was also crucial, crucial for the history of anarchism. Been five years of relative prosperity. Strike,77 and the great the economy recovered. 1883, the gear of the pittsburgh declaration. Force the government used to stifle strikes. , the stateillinois militia used gatling guns, the precursor to the machine gun, rapidfire gun, used them on a group of striking quarrymen. They killed two in that process. Twot seems to be contradictory things happening here. The anarchistsn and liberal reformers, conservative liberal reformers, are both agreeing something is wrong with the state, that the state, the american state, is becoming stronger, hence more repressive. They were certainly right about the first part, because we are going to get into this a little later in the course, but you are beginning to see by the 1880s the emergence of the modern american state. So all extremes are disturbed by this, either growth of its power, by its economic structure. Time that the groups i just mentioned are becoming very edgy about the american state, you have other groups represented in this course who are looking to the state, and high among those groups were of course africanamericans. Who were seeking state protection, that is federal protection, from the sorts of things that were going on in the american south. So you have one part of the course, the radicalism part, suspicious of the state, the other part, the race part, looking towards a stronger state , and it was not just africanamericans who were looking for a stronger state. Veterans groups, civil war veterans groups, quite successfully negotiated federal pensions for civil war veterans, Union Veterans are not confederate veterans, which increased the u. S. Budget enormously. Those are the currents and crosscurrents. Was a growth also in this d in membership in radical organizations. One group called the International Workers protective association had about 5000 real members. That is not a lot come but it is. Till the core of a movement it had about 15,000 sympathizers, people who had drifted in and out of the organization, and they were pretty much geographically dispersed. Affiliatedgroups with this in 50 American Cities, including new orleans, denver, and san francisco, the second tier of cities, so not big numbers, but signs there is discontent, and discontent may be channeled into these kinds of workers organization. And a couple of things to say about the organizations. First, in the instance i just cited, as well as in the burgeoning Labor Movement, conservative Labor Movement, called the American Federation of labor, the easiest to recruit or not the most oppressed. It was the skilled and semiskilled laborers who were the easiest to organize, and of course the hardest to fire. If you have a guy whose job is just to carry bricks, you can replace him, but if you have somebody who is a plumber, you cant just pull somebody off the street, so it is the skilled laborers who are also organizing, but who are also a lot less radical. And Something Else going on a couple of other points i want to make is that these are workers, both skilled and the unskilled i am talking about, who are important for what they are not doing. They are not resisting technology and industrialization. They are not trying to fight a retrograde, lets go back to the old days, but they are trying to make the new world more , and Something Else going on with the working class od was not justri to create acal, but working class and revolutionary have parties, various kinds of selfhelp organizations, even to follow a german model and have mens