Syndicalism
Pluto Wildcat Series: Final 2 sessions—Augmented Exploitation and Wobblies of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThese books uncover the radical militancy which characterises international workers struggles, both contemporary and historical. Looking at diverse topics including proletarianisation and class formation, mass production, gender, affective and reproductive labour, syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements, it is the most comprehensive exploration into workers’ organisation being developed today. All books from the series are available at the MEP on-line book store.
Pluto Wildcat Series: Final 2 sessions—Augmented Exploitation and Wobblies of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThese books uncover the radical militancy which characterises international workers struggles, both contemporary and historical. Looking at diverse topics including proletarianisation and class formation, mass production, gender, affective and reproductive labour, syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements, it is the most comprehensive exploration into workers’ organisation being developed today. All books from the series are available at the MEP on-line book store.
WOBBLIES OF THE WORLD: A Global History of the Industrial Workers of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDrawing on many important figures of the movements such as Tom Barker, Har Dayal, Joe Hill, James Larkin and William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, and exploring particular industries including shipping, mining, and agriculture, this book describes how the IWW and its ideals travelled around the world.
The Bisbee Deportation / The Battle of Blair Mountain
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants• On July 12, 1917, in the mining town of Bisbee Arizona, twelve hundred striking miners and their supporters were rounded up by forces organized by the town sheriff and the mining companies, marched through the town, parked in the town's baseball field, and then put in boxcars and shipped into the New Mexican desert.
• When the smoke cleared on the Battle of Blair Mountain, an estimated 1 million rounds were fired, dozens were killed, and 985 miners were arrested. The uprising was suppressed, but public awareness about the appalling conditions in which the miners were forced to live, work, and raise their families grew considerably.
Capital’s Terrorists in the Long Nineteenth Century
Video available on YouTubeIn his new book Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century, Chad E. Pearson details how US employers at the turn of the twentieth century deployed a variety of tactics to secure their power in and out of workplaces, acting extralegally through the Ku Klux Klan, Law and Order Leagues, Stockgrowers' organizations, and Citizens' Alliances,
Theodore Allen’s ‘The Kernel and Meaning’: A Strategic Critique of U.S. Labor History
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBefore Theodore W. Allen turned to his magnum opus, The Invention of the White Race, he drafted an essay "The Kernel and Meaning: A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of U.S. Historiography." In it, he assessed how the industrial bourgeoisie successfully overturned plantation capital's rule while assuring its own ascendancy over the proletariat. Allen reviewed six commonly held explanations as to why, despite favorable objective conditions, the U.S. left and workers movements failed to establish socialism or even a permanent working-class party. Participants in this group will read and discuss the original, 160-page typescript of Allen's unpublished essay.