An excerpt from "History of the American Working Class" by Anthony Bimba, revised edition, 1936
CHAPTER XXXIV
Recent tendencies, 1933 - 1936
The following main tendencies characterize this period:
(a) Inability of the ruling class to overcome the crisis.
(b) Contradictions in the ruling class over the uneven distribution of profits under the New Deal
(c) Disillusionment of large sections of workers, farmers and petty bourgeoisie with the Democratic and Republican parties, giving rise to the development of a Farmer-Labor Party movement
(d) The struggle for industrial unionism in the trade union movement
(e) Growing menace of fascism
(f) Inner crisis of the Socialist Party -- widening gulf between left-wing Militants and old-guard reactionaries
(g) The growth and influence of the Communist Party and the development of a movement for a united front.
The glowing promises of President Roosevelt to usher in prosperity through his New Deal did not materialize. The country still finds itself in the depression. The National Recovery Act has been ruled out by the decision of the United States Supreme Court which declared the N.R.A. unconstitutional for the simple reason that it was no longer needed by the uppermost strata of the ruling class. The N.R.A. had accomplished its mission. Prices had soared sky-high, the standard of living of the masses had been lowered, the profits of the big bankers, great corporations, and the trusts had been restored and greatly increased, the illusion of the workers that the N.R.A. guaranteed the right to organize and strike had begun to be dangerous. The Supreme Court had to act according to the wishes of the Bankers' Association and the Manufacturers' Association.
The San Francisco Waterfront Strike of 1934 was really what put the fear into the Overclass. From then on, the gloves came off. Our Betters figured they had little more to lose than what they'd already lost in the Depression, so why not take their fears and frustrations out on Labor?
From "The Peril of Fascism," Magil and Stevens, 1938; International Publishers.
A ... reign of terror prevailed ... in the coal and iron mines of the Birmingham (AL) region. In the spring of 1934, five strikers were shot and killed and many wounded in a strike of iron ore miners against the Unite States Steel and the Republic Steel companies. Assisted by the Birmingham police, a terrorist band called the White Legion was organized with the avowed purpose of "driving Communism out of Alabama." By Communism, the White Legion meant not only workers' political organizations but even A. F. of L. unions.
In Florida, fascist gangs organized by employers kidnapped, tarred, feathered and beat trade union organizers and in many cases murdered them and buried their bodies in swamps or abandoned mines. Describing the reign of terror conducted by Florida citrus and tobacco interests against trade unionists, the veteran newspaper columnist Junius Wood wrote:
Flogging, tar and feathering, and even death are not unusual as a means of disposing of persons who are disturbing to certain interests or what is vaguely called "social order." They are not carried out under any law in the Florida statutes, but by persons who believe such methods are for their own public good, and their political influence is so great that court trials, or even arrests, rarely follow.
... Supplementing this terrorist campaign, reactionaries launched a drive for legislation to outlaw militant working class parties, to restrict the rights of trad unions and to limit free speech, press and assemblage. ...Significantly, most of the bills [in Congress] were introduced by politicians from Southern states where an embryonic form of fascism was already in the saddle.
...
In four states --Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana and Tennessee -- the reactionaries succeeded in pushing through laws excluding from the ballot political parties advocating "sedition," "treason," or th "forcible overthrow of the government." These laws are so worded that, in the hands of zealous reactionary officials, they can be effectively used against any people's party which questions the beneficence of duPont-Hearst rule.
...
Even more sinister than this drive for repressive legislation was the secret underground campaign of the large corporations to strengthen their private armies and place them on a firmer military basis.
Sometimes, as we have indicated, these armed forces were organized as "vigilantes," or armed "patriotic" and "law and order" groups, recruited from business circles, professional jingoes and riff-raff from the underworld. Such groups began to appear in nearly every center where large corporations or plantation owners felt themselves menaced by strikes or trade union organization campaigns. In some cases, these groups had only a temporary existence and disappeared after termination of an industrial crisis. In other cases, they were orgaized on a more permanent basis. In Cleveland, Cincinnati, Hollywood and other centers, local posts of the American Legion or local officials began organizing and drilling armed contingents. The government encouraged this process by giving the American Legion 75,000 allegedly "obsolete" army rifles.
More frequently, however, these employers' armies took the form of company police or of trained bodies of professional gangsters, spies and strike breakers supplied by national detective agencies. Both the company police and the detective agencies are comparatively old American institutions, born in the formative years of monopoly capitalism; but during the anti-labor drive of 1934-36, they assumed vaster proportions than ever before, vesting new powers in the hands of the industrial titans and constituting a grave menace to the remaining liberties of the American workers.
Within the army there was a steady growth of fascist sentiment among high officers who clamored for a stronger military machine, not only to support the foreign policy of the United States, but to quell more effectively what they euphemistically called "domestic disturbances." At the end of 1933, in his annual report to the President, Army Chief of Staff General MacArthur (who led the troops in Hoover's famous victory over the bonus marchers at Anacostia) lengthily discussed the state of general social unrest in the country and concluded:
In the obvious state of unrest now prevailing throughout the world, evidences of which are plainly visible even in our own country, an efficient and dependable military establishment constantly responsive to the will of the government, constitutes a rock of stability and one of the nation's most priceless possessions.
Assistant Secretary of War Harry Woodring was even more explicit than the hero of Anacostia. In an article in Bernarr MacFadden's Liberty, Woodring. with all the zeal of an amateur soldier wrote:
Let me speak frankly! If this country should be threatened with foreign war, economic chaos or social revolution, the army has the training, the experience, the organization and the men to support the government and direct the country in the national interests... Our army happens to be the only branch of the government which is already organized and available not only to defend our territory, but also to cope with the social and economic problems in an emergency.
A "basic field manual" distributed to the army contained detailed tactical instructions for use against "mobs" and "crowds." The most effective methods for shooting, gassing, and bombing unarmed workers were discussed with fine scientific precision. "Blank cartridges should never be used against a mob, nor should a volley be fired over the heads of a mob even if there is little danger of hurting persons in the rear..." "Airplanes may be used for the purpose of keeping rioters off roofs by means of machine gun fire and, in conjunction with other arms, by dropping tear gas and high explosives..." "Hand grenades, especially those filled with chemicals, will be quite an essential part of the equipment." These and other bits of military wisdom were carefully set down for tje guidance of strike-breaking troops. Following the classic pattern of Italian fascism, the manual also instructed commanders in "disturbed areas" to establish contact with the American Legion and "other local organizations of law and order."
The fascist leanings of the army hierarchy responsible for these instructions is reflected in the following definition of democracy contained in the army's Training Manual No. 2000-25, distributed from 1928 to 1932 to youths taking military instruction:
Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meetings or any other form of "direct" expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic -- negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based on deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse without restraint or regard for consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
Finally, the most ominous symptom of the growing fascist tendencies among the rulers of America was the appearance of a large crop of fascist and semi-fascist organizations, some openly controlled and directed by big business, others indirectly controlled, and still others, starting out as "independent" middle class movements of protest, but diverted by unscrupulous and corrupt leaders into fascist channels.
...
The largest and most influential of the new host of reactionary organizations were either openly controlled or directed by prominent financiers and industrialists, or disguised so thinly that they were soon exposed. Among the organizations of this type were the American Liberty League, the Farmers Independence Council, the Sentinels of the Republic and the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution. This whole network of organizations, controlled by the most reactionary financial groups, uniformly operated under the slogans of "liberty" and "democracy, attempting to utilize America's strong democratic traditions to rally popular support for their anti-democratic program.
History, said Marx, repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. So with the Liberty League and its host of affiliates. The spectacle of the duPonts and the Hearsts, clothed in the cloaks and cocked hats of the revolutionaries of 1776, was political farce so broad that only those blinded by hatred for democracy and progress could miss it; so broad that it defeated the purposes of its authors. The Liberty League and its affiliates -- in spite of their vast financial resources -- failed to win popular support because they were openly controlled by the most hated men in America, by men whose ruthless exploitation and suppression of the people, in the daily course of their affairs, belied their professed belief in liberty and democracy.
So we see, everything old is new again, and if we think about it, we realize that the rightists and fascists are repeating themselves (as farce if you like) under the rigid tutelege of the oligarchs and plutocrats -- many of whom are the descendants of the same class sponsoring fascists in the 1930's. (The name Bush comes to mind, but we won't go there for now.)
What is different is that the "left" so called no longer exists as a political and/or proto-revolutionary force. All politics in this country these days is more or less rightist and much is clearly on a fascist pathway. "The Peril of Fascism" is a frankly Communist polemic from the era when Communists and Socialists and Leftists actually had a political structure and their agitation and demonstrations could and did have a political influence. Nowadays no such thing can occur. The opposition to the fascist tendendices in this country today is almost entirely confined under the Occupy rubric. While there are some elements of Marxist thought and economic analysis within the Occupy framework, from a political standpoint, Occupy is revolutionary but not "leftist." Nor is it "rightist." It consciously stands outside those categories and presses for something better than either.
At the moment, Our Rulers do not feel particularly threatened by the Occupy Movement cum Revolution, largely because it doesn't seem to be "doing anything" overtly to cause more than minor disrution of the looting and pillaging underway.
But we can see in Magil and Stevens' reports that there are more than a few seriously disabling and disrupting tactics the Overclass can easily bring to bear if need be to preserve their power and position.
[Interestingly, "The Power of Nightmares" is apparently no longer available in full on the internet, though other BBC/Adam Curtis material still is. Here's a link to a 22 minute excerpt, a link to the final episode, and here is a link to a transcript.]
[Further Update: As if by magic, "The Power of Nightmares" has re-appeared at Archive.org, so get it while it is hot... The other two episodes are at the link...]
Well, this has been an interesting morning. Not a pleasant one, but interesting.
Went to bed last night thinking about how really sickened I was by Chris Hedges' polemic, specifically at how harmful his dehumanization and scapegoating is. I understand it's "his way." At times, I can even appreciate it, but this one really stuck in my craw because it was a frontal assault on Occupy Oakland.
I think it's pretty clear that though I am not a direct participant in Occupy Oakland affairs, I do support them somewhat more strongly than other Occupies I also support, and I defend anarchists, especially those who have been given the rawest deal by ignorant people who have no idea what anarchism is or what anarchists believe. I'm still learning, but I wouldn't have had more than casual and very peripheral contact with anarchist thought and anarchists in person were it not for Occupy. I'm an old man, and it's kind of a thrill to have a whole new way of looking at things be opened to me at this late age.
In the course of my Occupy activities, I have dealt with people who wanted to engage in unspecified but clearly Black Bloc type Diversity of Tactics. They were very sincere, dedicated, not at all wild-eyed radicals intent on assassinations and bombings -- which is basically all most Americans have ever heard about or think they know about "anarchists."
I've dealt with them, and I am not at all afraid of them. They have no interest in harming me or any other human being. They want, sincerely, to help make things better, and they believe, sincerely, that Diversity of Tactics can hasten that better world we all claim as possible.
Thus when I see something like Hedges' egregious attack on what is really a phantom, a ghost of Black Bloc at all, my skin crawls. He uses the weapons of dehumanization and scapegoating against his target, which isn't really "the Black Bloc anarchists," it's Occupy Oakland, where these phantoms, these black-clad ghosts, loom so very large in his reveries.
His weapons of dehumanization and scapegoating are right out of "The Power of Nightmares," Adam Curtis's extraordinary 2004 documentary about how peoples can be driven by the politics of fear.
We fear what we don't understand or what we are told to fear, and we are prevented from understanding by the political need to instill fear in order to manage and control... you and me.
I don't fear anarchists or Black Bloc because I know them well enough to respect them, even if I don't agree with their positions or tactics. Hedges is counting on the fact that Americans by and large don't know anything about anarchists or Black Bloc -- except to fear them. And he ratchets fear of them up to the point of stark hysteria.
Scapegoating and demonization are extremely dangerous weapons in such a highly charged situation as we face now within the Occupy Movement. The external pressure from the authorities is only going to get worse as this election year and its numerous National Special Security events take place.
The anti-Occupy repression and propaganda campaigns haven't even begun compared to what's coming, and the notion that somehow by purging "the anarchists" -- Black Bloc or not -- now, the Movement will assure its safety and preservation is, in my view, whack. Purges can wait. The police are going to attack violently anyway.
I posted a version of my Chris Hedges' Meltdown piece over at dKos, and the response was fascinating. Not only was there an enormous amount outright hostility expressed toward my rejection of Hedges' thesis, there was an extraordinary amount of sheer ignorance on display; ignorance especially about anarchists and anarchism, Black Bloc, Oakland, what is and is not "violence," and so on. People don't know, and they are not meant to know. (Power of Nightmares again) Makes it surprisingly easy to inspire fear and dread, even hatred toward "the Other" by the Powers That Be, and in this case, it's Chris Hedges who is doing it.
I think it is shameful.
So, apparently, do some others, but I didn't see any shame at all in the comments to my essay; instead, I saw nodding approval of Hedges -- and frequent, full throated denunciation of "the anarchists" and their so-called violence.
I've encountered this phenomenon over and over and over again the past few weeks, so many times and in so many places with so many different kinds of people who almost all say the same thing: "Anarchists bad, they violent, smash them!" that I'm truly gobsmacked. How can people be so easily misled?
Well, we know, don't we?
Some counterpoint to the stupid:
OLA Anti-Social Media, an online Black Bloc site for Occupy Los Angeles, takes Hedges to the woodshed and smothers him with... some of his own medicine. And love. Oh yes. Don't forget the love!
And then there was this, posted at dKos shortly after my post that really, really ought to cause Hedges and all of his drooling adherents a LOT of heartburn, because Diane goes right to the point of why this kind of shit is so damned wrong.
We haven't seen the end of it by any means; the effort to purge "the anarchists" will continue until the Overclass embraces the Occupy!
Oh dear. My man Chris Hedges is on the warpath now. Appears that "the Black Bloc anarchists" have got his panties in a big old wad. For someone who's been around the block as many times as he has, this strikes me as a bit odd, as if something personal may have happened to him vis a vis "the Black Bloc anarchists," and he's lashing out for some reason.
I haven't finished the article yet, so I'll go back to it now and return anon to unpack it.
Bless his heart. --------------------------------------- All right, it is clear something has happened, but I don't know what. Chris Hedges is lashing out wildly, targeting "the Black Bloc anarchists" for his rage, but not comprehensibly. For example, someone called "Venomous Butterfly" wrote something highly critical of the Zapatistas (remember them?) that was published in a now defunct magazine called "Green Anarchist" -- and here's Chris posting a link to a website that has archived this undated article in a magazine that no exists and he's waving his arms and screaming, "See! See! Cancer!"
OK. I thought he was both smarter and more mature than this.
Something happened, I don't know what. Not only is he dredging up irrelevancies from doG knows when, but he is obsessed -- as so many Occupy "advocates" suddenly seem to have become -- with the tiny handful of individuals who have been out sporting now and then in black costumes, causing mischief to be sure (somebody, for example, lit a box on fire during a Fuck the Police march in Oakland in January, and the police had to walk around it when they were clearing the street. )"Violence! Anarchy! Wobblies!"
A bottle was thrown! Don't you understand???!!!
Uh. Yes. I do understand. And a mature response to a bottle thrown does not include going into hysterics and having a very public and very sad melt-down over it. Which is what is happening to Chris Hedges -- and apparently a lot of others in the Nonviolence Community.
I've been exposed to more outright hysteria and extraordinarily hostile and quite violent rhetoric from the Nonviolence Community in the last few days than I have ever been exposed to in my life.
There have been some really intense and emotionally charged internal confrontations connected with Occupy and Black Bloc since the beginning, but not until now have so many Nonviolence people got so in touch with their Inner Rage and let it out so passionately, using such violent rhetoric. In fact, I can't recall anyone in the Nonviolence Community doing so prior to the aftermath of J28 -- which I assume was the trigger, but I'm not sure. And over what?
Somebody wrote something years ago critical of the Zapatistas?
A bottle was thrown? In November?
No, I think it is pretty plain it is something else.
J28 marked the re-emergence on the public stage of the Occupy Movement, and it was very violent. It happened in Oakland where a flag was burned in front of an AP camera, and that image was plastered everywhere as "emblematic" of the Movement I guess. Actually, there was more than one flag burned, but we'll let that go. There was also an intense street "battle" -- of sorts -- in front of the Oakland Museum, during which a thousand or so unarmed demonstrators, some with makeshift shields and carts full of furniture (for the aborted "move in" at the Oakland Auditorium -- I'm old; that's what I know it as) confronted a line of several dozen cops who liberally and repeatedly fired tear gas, rubber bullets and various other kinds of "less lethal" munitions into the crowd.
There were other incidents of nonviolent -- but confrontational -- crowds being subjected to random munitions fire, bludgeons and attempts at kettling that climaxed with the mass arrest of hundreds and hundreds of people in front of the YMCA who were not allowed to disperse.
While there may have been Black Bloc participation in these incidents, I can't say for certain that Black Bloc was involved at all; some Black Bloc tactics were employed, notably protecting the wounded, but otherwise, there were few demonstrators dressed in black, and so far as I recall (it's been days, and I watched hours of video, some of it out of sequence) there was no actual Black Bloc contingent in the demonstration at all.
As I and others have reported, there were some incidents of individuals mostly in front of the crowd on Oak Street, none dressed in black that I recall, throwing back munitions that had been fired at them by police. There were reports -- and I saw at least two incidents -- in which individuals in the crowd on Oak St threw other objects at the police, including a garden chair. If they reached the police lines -- the chair didn't even come close -- I doubt they caused any physical harm. Given the intensity and frequency of the police fire, what was thrown at them in response was essentially nothing.
But none of that seems to be chapping Hedges behind. No, he's raging because someone in black threw a bottle in New York in solidarity with Oakland and someone else threw some trash in the street. BLACK BLOC!!! CANCER!!!! WOBBLIES!!!! REDS!!!!
This reaction is so over the top, so inappropriate and so apparently coordinated, I'm "beginning to wonder" if there isn't something afoot here.
Well, of course there is. Jeebus, were we born yesterday?
For Hedges, the problem may be that he is seeing the Revolution he plighted his troth to go off on another path without him. I remember the video of him literally in tears in Times Square last October or November, so moved he was that The Revolution he had hoped for had finally come. It was really very touching. I'll see if I can find the video. It happened October 15.
If he still believed what he is saying here, then he would know full well that Black Bloc is an insignificant, nearly nonexistent, element in the Occupy firmament -- especially in New York -- and those who adopt Black Bloc tactics can't take over the Movement, nor, in my estimation, do they want to.
What I've seen and heard from them and experienced is that they sincerely want to help. They believe sincerely that their disruptive tactics can and do help focus public attention on the violence of the system and who and what is responsible. What they seem to want more than anything is to be heard out and respected. An individual throwing a bottle -- whether or not dressed in black -- is not Black Bloc. Frustration and anger can affect anyone -- obviously including Chris Hedges, poor man -- and sometimes people will act out if they feel they have no other option.
At first I suspected the Black Bloc actions during General Strike Day in Oakland last November were the product of provocateurs, but then I saw more extensive video and assessed the targets and it was clear to me this was Black Bloc, not police provocateurs -- though I'm still suspicious of some of the later actions that caused damage closer to the City Hall. These actions, in my estimation, were spectacular, but they didn't really help the Movement, at least not in the short run, and one should note: they have not been repeated, despite all the hyperventilating about thrown bottles and makeshift shields.
There apparently is a Black Bloc learning curve, duh.
I can't say that right now for the Nonviolence purists like Hedges never seemed to be before.
That's what so odd about his outburst. He has never seemed to be a Nonviolence purist or pacifist or anything like that. He's been in Revolutionary situations; he knows what happens. It's messy, people do the best they can; and purges can wait.
The attacks on Occupy from within are clearly a coordinated effort to purge the anarchists who gave rise to the movement to begin with (not all anarchists follow Black Bloc methods and tactics). This is almost a duplication of what happened in Russia when the anarchists were purged from the Revolution. The rationale escapes me, however.
Unless -- as some have suspected -- the purpose is to ensure the Movement can't be effective, but perhaps persists as a sort of adjunct to the co-opted progressive left.
A coordinated effort at purging anarchists by co-opted progressives is deeply troubling if that's what's happening.
Or if it is as personal as it seems to be with Hedges, and his Revolution walked out on him, then it's sad...
At any rate, I'll give Chris a pass on this one for now; it's been a hard slog to this point, and people's nerves are really on edge.
Here are a number of videos from a Canadian source, rabble.ca, a leftist publication in Vancouver, BC. In Canada, they still have an activist left.
I'm posting them because it has come to my attention that there are Anarchists among the rabble gathered in Occupations now underway in 85 cities in the United States, and dozens abroad, with more than a thousand additional Occupations still in the pipeline. In fact, there have been a number of posts on OccupySacramento's Facebook page complaining about a couple of signs at the Occupation with that dreaded A In A Circle symbol on it, and how very scary it was, and how it would alienate everyone under the sun. "Please, would you get rid of them? No one will join you if you don't."
Well. Just as I'm not a Che Revolutionary, I'm not much of an Anarchist, either, but the model of direct and participatory democracy being used by most of the Occupations is actually based on trial and error efforts of Anarchist groups primarily in Europe, but also in North Africa over many months, and if I'm hearing right -- I may not be -- model originated in Eastern Europe during the twilight of the Soviet Empire. It's a difficult model to work, it's even harder for the authoritarian-minded to fathom, but it is remarkably effective in providing a socio-political context for the establishment and successful functioning of intentional communities bringing together disparate strangers such as the Occupations.
Consequently, just as Marx has been rehabilitated by the mainstream ("Marx was right about Capitalism. It's obvious."), I've found a greater appreciation for Anarchists. So often our beliefs about Anarchists and Anarchism are based on propaganda that is rooted in certain aspects of Anarchist protest demonstrations, such as the activities of the Black Bloc -- which truthfully, I've always thought was made up mostly of police and other provocateurs.
The videos record a panel discussion on the topic of a Diversity of Tactics in protest actions, including the actions of the Black Bloc. The explanation of the dynamics of protest demonstrations which include Anarchists and the Black Bloc is intriguing.
I usually don't have the patience for this sort of thing, but I've watched all of these videos today. I don't agree with the arguments made on behalf of the Black Bloc and their vandalism, but I don't think I've ever heard them put the way they are in the third video in the series, either. Clearly, this sort of argument gets people very upset, even in this largely sympathetic crowd.
The videos were posted by this site: http://rabble.ca/ Worth a look. It was also the original referring site for the Chris Hedges video below.
[Note: There is absolutely no sign of Black Bloc participation in any of the Occupation marches and demonstrations I've seen; there are, however, many reports of infiltrators -- generally assumed to be police gathering intel -- and occasional reports of suspected provocateurs, who are almost immediately asked to leave if they advocate any kind of violence and/or try to recruit people to perform violent acts. This has been an iron law, perhaps the only one: No Violence. The tonic for infiltration is generally seen to be transparency: as long as everyone who wants to knows everything that's going on, there is nothing to fear from the police gathering intelligence as well. As long as there are no secrets, and no leadership cliques, there is nothing to fear from the police "knowing" something that everybody knows.]
