Though May 1 became an important day for Socialists and Communists, state governments and less radical labor leaders feared that the date was too emotionally charged. In 1894, after President Grover Cleveland ordered the brutal suppression of the Pullman Strike, he realized that he had to do something to curry favor with the labor movement, which viewed him with contempt. Worried that a May 1 holiday would encourage rabble-rousing in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot, he followed the lead of several states and made the first Monday in September a federal holiday in honor of the workingman. The political maneuver didn’t achieve its desired effect, however: Cleveland lost the Democratic Party’s 1896 presidential nomination to William Jennings Bryan.
Bonus Explainer: May 1 wasn’t forgotten, however. In the 1920s, it became known in the United States as Loyalty Day, and it’s still observed with an annual presidential proclamation that asks all government officials to take the not-so-outlandish step of flying the U.S. flag above their buildings.
Loyalty Day…. gag….
Libertarian (or anarcho-) syndicalism is based on the principle that “the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves.” This means workers need to have a movement they control in order to be able to change the society and gain power.
Syndicalism is both program and strategy. The goal of syndicalism is the creation of a form of self-managed socialism where workers manage the industries, the land and means of production are owned by the whole society, and the old hierarchical government apparatus is replaced with a new form of popular power — rooted in the direct democracy of assemblies in workplaces and neighborhoods. The profit system would be replaced by production for direct benefit.
To escape the present system of oppression and exploitation, syndicalists advocate for the development of a certain kind of labor movement — controlled by its members, works to widen solidarity, looks out for the interests of the working class as a whole, extends a hand across borders to coordinate struggles with workers in other countries, opposes racism and sexism, rejects “partnership” with the employers, remains independent of the political parties and professional politicians, rejects the imperialist policy of the American federal state, and works to develop an alliance with other social movements.
Spain’s fifth general strike hasbeen set for September 29th amidst massive public sector cuts and attacks on job security passed by the ruling Socialist Party - and the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is calling for it to be made indefinite.
Haven’t read this yet, but it looks good and has lots of citations. Woo!
Bring back the Bourse du Travail (labor exchange/councils) and fraternal societies.
Mutual aid, education, self-organization and health care.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourse_du_Travail
According to Vadim Damier, “The bourses de travail carried on active work creating solidarity among workers at the local level, independent of political parties and individual unions which often turned out to be under party influence. The bourses became a unique kind of center for the self-organization and mutual aid of workers: they helped the unemployed and people seeking work; they also helped the sick and victims of workplace accidents; they created libraries, social museums, and both specialist and generalist courses; and they carried on propaganda for the creation of unions, backing this up in a systematic way by organizing strikes, setting up strike funds, engaging in general agitation, etc.”
“Today, America is again at war and in financial trouble caused by bankers, corporate capitalists and other members of the elite 20 percent, Republicans are calling the president a socialist, and the Wobblies are back.”
Del Duca explains, “Americans are driven to work longer and harder. They come home, hurry through supper and collapse in front of the TV. There’s no time to nurture children or marriage. The system keeps people broke, so there is no time for family activities or personal healing.
There is no middle class in America.
“American workers are the most misinformed in the world. They are enthusiastic and willing slaves to an unfair system, a system that pays some people $250,000 a year and others $7 an hour. In a cooperative (such as IWW members would organize within an industry) everyone would know what everyone else was paid. Workers would vote on the boss’s salary and their own,” Del Duca said.
The IWW philosophy is as much libertarian as socialist. “We do not want to force anyone to do anything,” Del Duca said. “Workers can solve their own problems.”
Johann Rudolf Rocker (March 25, 1873– September 19, 1958) was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented “only different methods of economy” and that the first objective for anarchists was “to secure the personal and social freedom of men”
http://sites.google.com/site/governedbywolves/rudolf-rocker/socialism-and-the-state
