Reading Chad E. Pearson's book Capital's Terrorists it is hard not to be shocked by the stories of repression he records. The Tampa kidnapping of 1901 is unusual because it did not lead to the murder or injury of workers or their union organisers. There are many other tragic examples of lynching, shooting, torture and imprisonment however through the period covered. Pearson highlights the uniqueness of this violence with comparable economies:
Nationally, between 1872 and 1914, anti-labor union forces killed between 500 and 800 workers in direct conflicts. This amount is considerably larger than the number of strike-related deaths in other countries during this period. In Germany... the number of protesters killed during the same period was sixteen. In France... nineteen laborers were killed between 1906 and 1909.
This violence was a consequence of the history of the United States. The kidnapping of Tampa's union activists was inspired by the forced displacement of Florida's Native American population. Systematic and murderous violence against black workers' flowed directly from the politics and organisation of the bosses during the Slavery and Reconstruction eras. The violence that had founded the United States became part of the DNA of class relations. This is not to say that other countries "elites" did not commit murder or kidnapping. The British state's treatment of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the protesters at Peterloo or other rebels gives the lie to that. The point that Pearson makes is that the scale and nature of the violence in the US used against workers' was unprecedented.
W. E. B. Du Bois said that the decade after Reconstruction saw the "counter-revolution of property", a period when Pearson tells us:
Thanks partially to elites' vigilantism, which involved various forms of coercion, intimidation and violence meant to keep African Americans on worksites, and away from polling booths, schools and political formations - the 1880s saw major increase in the production of corn, cotton, rice and sugar. Klansmen and other vigilantes helps to ensure that the South's coercive labor regimes produced enough commodities to meet global demand.
The employers' organisations which drove such counter-labour activities saw their actions as maintaining their power, influence and the status quo - and ensuring huge profits. As such paramilitary groups like the KKK should be understood was more than just racist organisations. They were "multilocational and decentralized association[s] that used terrorism to... promote the interests of society's most privileged members. In short, vigilante groups like the Klan served the class interests of those at the top of society". These groups had the twin goals of "labour control and the reinstatement of 'law and order'."
That is not to say that racism was unimportant. In fact, racism against Black people, immigrants and indigenous people runs through each chapter. The bosses organising against strikers in mines, the cigar industry, streetcars or wherever, used racism as a tactic to divide and rule, as well as being an ideological that they subscribed personally too. Racism was also, clearly a motivating factor for the individuals in groups like the KKK or other organisations discussed by Pearson.
But Pearson argues that class is the crucial tool for understanding these groups and the conflicts they engaged in. The violence used by the elite classes against workers, and the organisations they created to do this, was part of the cementing of comradeship between the bosses and those who identified with them. It helped isolate workers (and their organisations) from other groups in society, such as middle class shop owners and newspaper editors. It also explains the overlap and support given by the regional and national state to the local bosses. Time and again Pearson describes how vigilantes are "let off" or exonerated by the legal system as judges and Presidential appointees identify not with law and order, but with their class interests. Indeed there was an understanding for some trade union activists that "Uncle Sam is against us", in other words - that the US state was their enemy as much as the bosses. The reality of such disputes was, as Pearson points out, that "some relatively moderate union leaders [were transformed] into rather confident quasi-revolutionaries".
Anti trade unionism overlapped very much with anti-socialism. The "elites" themselves developed their own ruling class ideology to justify and encourage their actions. Quite a lot of Pearson's work focuses on J. West Goodwin, an active figure in the setting up of Citizens Alliances where he drew on his own, violent, experiences in stopping strikes. These Alliances, often involving hundreds or thousands of ruling class figures, actively countered workers organisations. Justifying this saw their spokespersons emphasising the importance of the "open shop" - a workplace where workers were not compelled to join unions. In Colorado, the Citizens' Alliance declared "The 'open shop' is the foundation of this organisation". Another Alliance activist in St Louis declared the closed shop "the worst curse that ever befell this country", worse than "wars, pestilence, cyclones, floods, earthquakes, fires" and so on.
A core ideology of the capitalist system is the illusion that workers' are competing on a level playing field in the labour market. When workers' organise to build a trade union, it challenges the fundamentals of how the system works. So for capitalists like Goodwin, the vocal opposition to the closed shop was linked to their belief in a system that would be free to maximise their profits. The close association in the bosses minds' between a system free from workers' organisation and their personal role was summed up by a motto of the Idaho Springs Citizens' Protective League: "They Who Furnish the Capital Should Conduct the Business. Law and Order First - Politics, Creeds and Unions Afterwards". However the problem for the bosses, as always, was that the capital came from workers' labour and workers' would organise to try and get a bigger share of the fruits of their work.
Why does this matter? In his epilogue, Pearson draws a clear line between Capital's Terrorists in the founding period of US capitalism and the Terrorist attack on the Capitol, in January 2021. At "minimum", "both sets of actors had political agendas that they believed could be achieved by using brute force". But also "it is a safe bet... that most of the terrorists in the Capitol, especially the business owners, opposed labor organisations with the same level of intensity". But as Pearson points out, there are limitations to this analysis. Nonetheless, the key thing is that the history of US capitalism is one that has legitimised vigilante violence against workers, the left and the Black community.
Readers like myself who found themselves surprised by the overt violence used against trade unions as described in Pearson's book, will have a better understanding of the centrality of violence to the US political system itself. In this regard alone, Chad E. Pearson's Capital's Terrorists is a tremendous contribution. But there is one further point. The reader will emerge better equipped to understand the threat that US workers' faced to their organising in the past and today. In an era when we are often told that American workers are part of the problem, reminding ourselves of the brave struggles and appalling sacrifices that they have made in the past is both inspiring and important.
Related Reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment