Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of production and the economy at large. Developed in French labor unions during the late 19th century, syndicalist movements were most predominant amongst the socialist movement during the interwar period which preceded the outbreak of World War II.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
Eugene Victor Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.
Industrial unionism is a trade union organising method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of skill or trade, thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations.
William Dudley "Big Bill" Haywood was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Haywood was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
William Z. Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Communist politician, whose career included serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1945 to 1957. He was previously a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, leading the drive to organize the packinghouse industry during World War I and the steel strike of 1919.
Labor aristocracy or labour aristocracy has at least four meanings: (1) as a term with Marxist theoretical underpinnings; (2) as a specific type of trade unionism; (3) as a shorthand description by revolutionary industrial unions for the bureaucracy of craft-based business unionism; and (4) in the 19th and early 20th centuries was also a phrase used to define better-off members of the working class.
The first Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of far-left movements, including Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included the Russian 1917 October Revolution and anarchist bombings in the U.S. At its height in 1919–1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged spread of socialism, communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of concern.
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and head of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He is one of three Americans to be buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919), was a United States Supreme Court decision, relevant for US labor law and constitutional law, that upheld the Espionage Act of 1917.
The Battle of George Square was a violent confrontation in Glasgow, Scotland between City of Glasgow Police and striking workers, centred around George Square. The "battle", also known as "Bloody Friday" or "Black Friday", took place on Friday 31 January 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War. During the riot, the Sheriff of Lanarkshire called for military aid, and government troops, supported by six tanks, were moved to key points in the city. The strike leaders were arrested for inciting the riot. Although it is often stated that there were no fatalities, one police constable died several months later from injuries received during the rioting.
The San Diego free speech fight in San Diego, California, in 1912 was one of the most famous class conflicts over the free speech rights of labor unions. Starting out as one of several direct actions known as free speech fights carried out across North America by the Industrial Workers of the World, the catalyst of the San Diego free speech fight was the passing of Ordinance No. 4623 that banned all kinds of speech in an area that included "soapbox row" downtown. Clashes with the police in the area led to riots, multiple deaths including the deaths of police officers, as well as the retaliatory kidnapping and torture of notable Socialists, including Emma Goldman's manager Ben Reitman. As a direct result of the aftermath of this fight, the neighborhood of Stingaree was razed to the ground and the obliteration of San Diego's Chinatown.
Free speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members, engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights.
The Red Flag riots were a series of violent demonstrations and attacks that occurred in Brisbane, Australia over the course of 1918–19. The attacks were largely undertaken by returned soldiers from the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and were focused upon socialists and other elements of society that the ex-servicemen considered to be disloyal. The name was coined because of the flags that a number of the demonstrators carried, which were associated with the trade union movement and which were banned under the War Precautions Act. The most notable incident occurred on 24 March 1919, when a crowd of about 8,000 ex-servicemen clashed with police who were preventing them from attacking the Russian Hall in Merivale Street, South Brisbane.
The Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO), later known as the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, was an organization of farm workers throughout the United States and Canada formed on April 15, 1915, in Kansas City. It was supported by, and a subsidiary organization of, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Although the IWW had advocated the abolition of the wage system as an ultimate goal since its own formation ten years earlier, the AWO's founding convention sought rather to address immediate needs, and championed a ten-hour work day, premium pay for overtime, a minimum wage, good food and bedding for workers. In 1917 the organization changed names to the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (AWIU) as part of a broader reorganization of IWW industrial unions.
Arthur Patrick L. "Pat" Quinlan (1883–1948) was an Irish trade union organizer, journalist, and socialist political activist. Quinlan is best remembered for the part he played as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1913 Paterson silk strike — an event which led to his imprisonment for two years in the New Jersey State Penitentiary.
The Bisbee Riot, or the Battle of Brewery Gulch, occurred on July 3, 1919, between the black Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and members of local police forces in Bisbee, Arizona.
The International Labor Defense (ILD) (1925–1947) was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation. In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA. It intended to expand its appeal, especially to African Americans in the South. In several prominent cases in which blacks had been sentenced to death in the South, the CRC campaigned on behalf of black defendants. It had some conflict with former allies, such as the NAACP, and became increasingly isolated. Because of federal government pressure against organizations it considered subversive, such as the CRC, it became less useful in representing defendants in criminal justice cases. The CRC was dissolved in 1956. At the same time, in this period, black leaders were expanding the activities and reach of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, in a case managed by the NAACP, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
Joseph William Sharts (1875-1965) was an American attorney, political activist, newspaper editor, and novelist. Sharts is best remembered as a popular novelist of the first two decades of the 20th century and as a defense attorney in a number of high-profile political trials, including cases involving Socialist Party of America leader Eugene V. Debs, future Workers (Communist) Party leader C. E. Ruthenberg, and radical clergyman William Montgomery Brown.
Albert Fearing Hayden was an American judge who presided over the sentencing of people arrested during the May Day riots of 1919. This made him a target during the 1919 United States anarchist bombings when his house was bombed.
