The Congress of Socialists of the United States, better known as the 1881 Chicago Social Revolutionary Congress, was a meeting of anarchists and socialists in Chicago in October 1881 to organize the new social revolutionary groups splintered from the American Socialistic Labor Party.
The Chicago congress, officially known as the Congress of Socialists of the United States, was held October 21 to 23, 1881, with 21 delegates in North Side Turner Hall. Organized by the New York Social Revolutionary Club and American delegates to the London congress three months earlier, the meeting was called to gather social revolutionaries who believed in action outside of electoral politics. All socialists with this aim were invited to apply to August Spies of Chicago's Arbeiter-Zeitung newspaper, who served as the congress's secretary. Many German emigres attended, mostly representing East Coast and Midwest cities. It was the first meeting of what became the American anarchist movement. [1]
Key figures in the congress included Justus Schwab, Albert Parsons, and August Spies. Resolutions addressed the British government in Ireland, the populists in Russia, and militant positions against private property, against wage slavery, for insurrectionary propaganda by the deed, and for the resolutions of the London congress. [2]
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor. An anarchist, Spies was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder following a bomb attack on police in an event remembered as the Haymarket affair. Spies was one of four who were executed in the aftermath of this event.
George Engel was a labor union activist executed after the Haymarket riot, along with Albert Parsons, August Spies, and Adolph Fischer.
Adolph Fischer was an anarchist and labor union activist tried and executed after the Haymarket Riot.
Luigi Galleani was an Italian insurrectionary anarchist best known for his advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", a strategy of political assassinations and violent attacks.
In the United States, anarchism began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
Samuel "Sam" Fielden was an English-born American Methodist pastor, socialist, anarchist and labor activist who was one of eight convicted in the 1886 Haymarket bombing.
Dyer Daniel Lum was an American anarchist, labor activist and poet. A leading syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, Lum is best remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.
Golos Truda was a Russian-language anarchist newspaper. Founded by working-class Russian expatriates in New York City in 1911, Golos Truda shifted to Petrograd during the Russian Revolution in 1917, when its editors took advantage of the general amnesty and right of return for political dissidents. There, the paper integrated itself into the anarchist labour movement, pronounced the necessity of a social revolution of and by the workers, and situated itself in opposition to the myriad of other left-wing movements.
The Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, better known simply as the Nabat, was a Ukrainian anarchist organization that came to prominence during the Ukrainian War of Independence. The organization, based in Kharkiv, had branches in all of Ukraine's major cities. Its constitution was designed to be appealing to each of the different anarchist schools of thought.
The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after the events at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, during which one person was killed and many workers injured. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
Marie Le Compte was an American journal editor and anarchist who was active during the early 1880s.
The International Working People's Association (IWPA), sometimes known as the "Black International," was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England. In America the group is best remembered as the political organization uniting Albert Parsons, August Spies, and other anarchist leaders prosecuted in the wake of the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago.
Boris Yelensky was a Russian anarchist propagandist from the early 20th century. Born in Russia in 1889, he participated in the 1905 Revolution, later migrating to the US, returning to take part in the 1917 Revolution and migrating once more to the US. Once there, he became a prominent figure in the anarchism movement, particularly in the Anarchist Red Cross in Chicago.
Freie Arbeiter Stimme was a Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper published from New York City's Lower East Side between 1890 and 1977. It was among the world's longest running anarchist journals, and the primary organ of the Jewish anarchist movement in the United States; at the time that it ceased publication it was the world's oldest Yiddish newspaper. Historian of anarchism Paul Avrich described the paper as playing a vital role in Jewish–American labor history and upholding a high literary standard, having published the most lauded writers and poets in Yiddish radicalism. The paper's editors were major figures in the Jewish–American anarchist movement: David Edelstadt, Saul Yanovsky, Joseph Cohen, Hillel Solotaroff, Roman Lewis, and Moshe Katz.
Justus H. Schwab (1847–1900) was the keeper of a radical saloon in New York City's Lower East Side. An emigre from Germany, Schwab was involved in early American anarchism in the early 1880s, including the anti-authoritarian New York Social Revolutionary Club's split from the Socialistic Labor Party and Johann Most's entry to the United States.
To the Workingmen of America, known as the Pittsburgh Manifesto or Pittsburgh Proclamation, is an anarchist manifesto issued at the October 1883 Pittsburgh Congress of the International Working People's Association. After the organization faded, the manifesto remained generally accepted by American anarchists as a clear articulation of their beliefs.
The Chicago idea is an ideology combining anarchism and revolutionary unionism. It was a precursor to anarcho-syndicalism professed by Chicago anarchists, especially Albert Parsons and August Spies, in the mid-1880s.
"Anarchism or Communism?", better known as the Most–Grottkau debate, was a nationally advertised, public debate between America's foremost revolutionary anarchist Johann Most and Paul Grottkau in Chicago on May 24, 1884. The session consisted of two statements and two rebuttals and was published by the Chicago International Working People's Association as a 48-page pamphlet.
The New York Social Revolutionary Club was an anarchist group founded in 1880. Following a schism in the Socialistic Labor Party, the breakaway club reflected its members more revolutionary, anarchistic views. Its key figures included Wilhelm Hasselmann, Moritz Bachmann, and Justus Schwab.
The International Social Revolutionary Congress was an anarchist meeting in London between 14 and 20 July 1881, with the aim of founding a new International organization for anti-authoritiarian socialism.