#workingmen

[leatherviz]

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[argyrocratie]

Summary of the discutions on the theme of "political action" at the seventh general congress of the International, in Brussels (1874):

"Frohme and Faust develop the point of view of the German socialists on the political question:

To combat the German State, strongly centralized, an organization equally centralized is necessary. To allow the bourgeoisie to dominate the state completely would be the suicide of the socialist workers' party; the latter must dispute political power with the bourgeoisie, and, when it has conquered it, transform the bourgeois state into a socialist state. The German socialists do not delude themselves that they will achieve this goal peacefully: they know perfectly well that it is only by violence that they will attain this goal, and moreover the government itself sets an example of acts of violence by persecuting the socialist party. But legal and parliamentary political action serves them as a means of agitation and as a guarantee of security. If, when, before the courts, their writings and words demanding collective property are incriminated, they were to say clearly that it is by violence that they want to achieve it, they would fall under the penal code; but, by saying that it is by legal means, they can continue to act and to propagate their principles. As for the value of this means of action from the point of view of propaganda, one has only to judge it by seeing the results obtained. The German workers will not be diverted from political action, any attempt to do so would be childish.

Bastin and Verrycken give an account of Belgian ideas on the political question:

For Belgian workers there can be no question of political action, since they do not possess universal suffrage. They will do nothing to obtain universal suffrage, because they know that it would be of no use to them; they expect nothing from parliaments, and they want to continue to devote all their activity to the organization of workers by trades and federations; the working class will be able, when this organization is more generalized, to make the Social Revolution successfully.

Schwitzguébel:

It was experience that pushed the Jura socialists, although they had universal suffrage, to become abstentionists. At the birth of the international sections, they generally supported the political parties. The question of workers’ candidacies was raised; the bourgeois parties promised concessions, but deceived the overconfident socialist workers. The lesson has been learned; and, since then, the studies on political matters that have been made in the International, have increasingly convinced the Jura internationalists that by leaving the bourgeois parties to their political tinkering, and by organizing themselves outside of them and against them, the workers would certainly prepare a much more revolutionary situation than by negotiating with the bourgeois in the legislative assemblies.

Gomez:

The situation has become so revolutionary in Spain that the expression “political action” is no longer even possible there. In France, in Italy, the situation is becoming like this too. In Germany, government persecutions will end up creating a similar situation. When the big states are in such a situation, the workers no longer have to concern themselves with political action, but with revolutionary action.

The Geneva Propaganda Section had sent its opinion on political action:

A minority wants absolute abstention; the majority wants abstention from state politics, but advocates workers' candidacies in the local elections.

Van Wedemer of the Parisian section had given in these terms, at the private session of Wednesday, the opinion of his constituents on the question:

All those who work must unite, not to conquer any power, but to obtain the negation of all political government, which for us does not only mean oppression, but trickery and lies; our duty is to join forces to create an insurmountable dam to the shameless demands of capital, and we can only achieve this through incessant propaganda among the workers, who must organize themselves for the true social Revolution.

In the private session on Thursday afternoon, a commission had been appointed to draw up a statement summarizing the opinion of the Congress on the question of political action. This commission, composed of Gomez, Cœnen, Frohme and Verrycken, presented, on Wednesday evening, the following draft:

On the question of knowing to what extent the political action of the working classes can be necessary or useful to the advent of the social revolution, the Congress declares that it is for each federation and for the democratic socialist party of each country to determine the line of political conduct which they think they should follow.

This statement was adopted unanimously."

-from James Guillaume's "L’Internationale, documents et souvenirs (Tome III,Cinquième partie)"

[ptrcbtmn]

(Bakunin was anti Semitic)

[scorchedhearth]

btw cowboy hal and guy :))

[todayontumblr]

Monday May 1.

May Day.

Today is a day that requires little introduction. It is #may day, otherwise known as #international workers day or Labour Day. Celebrated every year on May 1, or the first Monday of May, it marks a day of celebration and solidarity between laborers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labor movement. It is a national public holiday in many countries across the world and has a fascinating, inspiring history. The Marxist International Socialist Congress met in Paris in 1889, where they established the Second International as a successor to the International Workingmen's Association. It was here they established a resolution for a "great international demonstration" to support demands for an eight-hour working day from the working classes. Today's date, May 1, was selected by the American Federation of Labor to mark a general strike in the United States. This strike began on this date in 1886, and subsequently became an annual event. In 1904, the Sixth Conference of the Second International called for "all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace". But it is not just consigned to history, by any means, because #may day continues to this day.

There are strikes, marches, rallies, and protests across the world today marking May Day. The struggle continues, but today is also the celebration. Wherever you are across the world, and however you're spending International Worker's Day 2023, we wish you love, light, and solidarity in the fight for better. 

[sansculottides]

"Workers, do not be deceived: it is the great struggle: parasitism and labor, exploitation and production are at death-grips. If you are sick or vegetating in ignorance and squatting in the muck; if you want your children to be men gaining the reward of their labor, not a sort of animal trained for the workshop and for war, fertilizing with its sweat the fortune of an exploiter, or pouring out its blood for a despot; if you want the daughters whom you cannot bring up and watch over as you would, to be no longer instruments of pleasure in the arms of the aristocracy of wealth; if you want debauch and poverty no longer to drive men to the police and women to prostitution; if, finally, you desire the reign of justice, workers, be intelligent, arise! And let your stout hands fling beneath your feet the foul reaction! ...Long live the Republic! Long live the Commune!"

--Statement of the Central Committee of the National Guard of the Paris commune on April 5, 1871.

The National Guard of the Commune was not the same as the old government's army that defended bourgeois interest; the National Guard of the Commune consisted of the workingmen of Paris. Their officers and Central Committee were democratically elected and subject to recall if they lost the confidence of the people.

The Paris Commune started today, March 18, in 1871. At the time the working people of Paris were driven to poverty and starvation by the war with Prussia. On this day in 1871 the people of Paris--especially women and children--chased out the bourgeois government, who ran away pitifully with their tails between their legs to Versailles, leaving the city to the control of its workers. The workers of Paris established their own government that sought not to merely address urgent and base concerns such as hunger, rent, and unemployment, but also to found a kinder society by radicalizing institutions such as education or the concept of the family. It was the first attempt at a workers' state in history.

The Commune lasted for only 72 days, when the French government violently and ruthlessly crushed it. They brutally massacred the workers in the event that is known as Bloody Week. Historian Donny Gluckstein wrote: "Bloody Week was a graphic example of a capitalist state stripped to its bare essentials--'armed bodies of men'--exterminating a threat to the system of domination and exploitation." Paris suffered a labor shortage after this massacre.

We remember the Paris Commune, its principles, and its battle. Even today we sing the Internationale, a product of that relentless hopeful spirit of the Commune and its people who dared to believe a kinder world was possible--if only we fight for it.

Picture is the Communards Wall at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where workers of the Commune were killed by bourgeois forces. People still leave flowers every year.

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 11

[ First | Prev | Table of Contents | Next ]

Then came the Continental revolutions of February and March 1848, in which the working people played such a prominent part, and, at least in Paris, put forward demands which were certainly inadmissible from the point of view of capitalist society. And then came the general reaction. First, the defeat of the Chartists on April 10, 1848; then the crushing of the Paris workingmen's insurrection in June of the same year; then the disasters of 1849 in Italy, Hungary, South Germany, and at last the victory of Louis Bonaparte over Paris, December 2, 1851. For a time, at least, the bugbear of working-class pretensions was put down, but at what cost! If the British bourgeois had been convinced before of the necessity of maintaining the common people in a religious mood, how much more must he feel that necessity after all these experiences? Regardless of the sneers of his Continental compeers, he continued to spend thousands and tens of thousands, year after year, upon the evangelization of the lower orders; not content with his own native religious machinery, he appealed to Brother Jonathan [1], the greatest organizer in existence of religion as a trade, and imported from America revivalism, Moody and Sankey, and the like; and, finally, he accepted the dangerous aid of the Salvation Army, which revives the propaganda of early Christianity, appeals to the poor as the elect, fights capitalism in a religious way, and thus fosters an element of early Christian class antagonism, which one day may become troublesome to the well-to-do people who now find the ready money for it.

It seems a law of historical development that the bourgeoisie can in no European country get hold of political power – at least for any length of time – in the same exclusive way in which the feudal aristocracy kept hold of it during the Middle Ages. Even in France, where feudalism was completely extinguished, the bourgeoisie as a whole has held full possession of the Government for very short periods only. During Louis Philippe's reign, 1830-48, a very small portion of the bourgeoisie ruled the kingdom; by far the larger part were excluded from the suffrage by the high qualification. Under the Second Republic, 1848-51, the whole bourgeoisie ruled but for three years only; their incapacity brought on the Second Empire. It is only now, in the Third Republic, that the bourgeoisie as a whole have kept possession of the helm for more than 20 years; and they are already showing lively signs of decadence. A durable reign of the bourgeoisie has been possible only in countries like America, where feudalism was unknown, and society at the very beginning started from a bourgeois basis. And even in France and America, the successors of the bourgeoisie, the working people, are already knocking at the door.

[1] "Brother Jonathan" – A sort of Anglo-Christian "Uncle Sam".

[ First | Prev | Table of Contents | Next ]

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 6 March 1913, Joe Hill's song "There is Power in a Union" first appeared in the Industrial Workers of the World union's Little Red Song Book. Sung on picket lines and in working class protests around the country, it asks workers: "Would you have mansions of gold in the sky/and live in a shack, way in the back?/Would you have wings up in heaven to fly/And starve here with rags on your back?" And advises them: "There is power, there is power/In a band of workingmen,/When they stand hand in hand/That’s a power, that’s a power/That must rule in every land,/One Industrial Union Grand". Hill was executed by the state of Utah in 1915 in what is widely regarded as a politically-motivated miscarriage of justice. Get it and over 250 other IWW songs in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-big-red-songbook-250-iww-songs https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2224506554401149/?type=3

[dailyanarchistposts]

This past International Workers Day, otherwise known as May Day, I attended my local rally. The same old May Day groups were in attendance, Party for Socialist Liberation (PSL), Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and a couple other single issue labor groups. The endless tedium of speeches aside, something strange stood out to me. Every group called for left unity in some way or another. “Unite as workers to crush capitalism,” was the exact quote from the young man in running shoes, jeans, and a bright red PSL shirt. I could have spoken up and made a scene, again, but I feel it is more effective to broadly address why this call for left unity is absurd especially considering the Marxist historical revisionism surrounding May Day. The success of May Day was directly because of the anarchist Haymarket Martyrs and the Marxist attempt to ignore this fact is one of the many reasons why left unity is never in the best interest of anarchists.

Before we begin, it is important to go over the events of the Haymarket uprising on May 4th, 1886. The first May Day was called for by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) as the official first day the eight-hour workday in 1886. On May 1st 1886, between 30,000 and 80,000 laborers in Chicago refused to work in support of the eight hour day, which shut down the industrial zones. August Spies, a German-born anarchist and leading contributor to the newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung, was enthused by the unity and relative success of the eight-hour fight.[1] The McCormick Reaper Works’ solution, instead of meeting the demands of the workers, was to hire scabs. On May 3rd, 1886, striking workers from the McCormick Plant asked Spies to come down to the Southwest side of Chicago and give a speech to bolster morale. Minutes into Spies speech, the scabs began filing out of the plant and the McCormick strikers rushed to the gates of the factory. To protect the business and scabs, 200 police officers rushed in and beat the strikers with clubs and shot them with pistols. According to Spies, 6 strikers were killed including those that were shot in the back as they fled. Spies knew that the battle had been lost and returned to his newspaper office with the sound of screams and pistol fire still ringing in his ear.

That night, August Spies rushed into print several thousand leaflets urging workingmen to come to a meeting the next day, May 4th, at Haymarket Square.[2] The next day, the anarchists August Spies, Albert Parsons, and the Rev. Samuel Fielden spoke to a crowd estimated variously between 600 and 3,000. At around 10:30 PM as Fielden spoke, the police showed up despite the peaceful nature of the crowd. As they ordered the crowd to disperse, a bomb was thrown into the advancing officers, killing 6. The Police then opened fire on the anarchists killing 4 and some of the anarchists returned fire killing another police officer. The Police argued it was a conspiracy and eight influential anarchists were arrested, including Spies and Parsons, who were not present but had significant influence in the community. On November 11th 1887, 4 convicted anarchists including Spices, Parsons, Adolph Fischer, and George Engle were hanged. The state executions further enraged the broader community and would be the catalyst for the International Workers Day.

The Haymarket Uprising was internationally significant. During the funeral procession for the anarchists in Chicago, the historian Philip Foner estimates, between 150,000 and 500,000 people lined the streets in support. Both the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, although initially reluctant, supported the slain anarchists as heroes of labor. The Knights of Labor even published the autobiographies of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, Engle, and the anarchist who killed himself in prison, Oscar Neebe.[3] The London Freedom group argued “No event in the worldwide evolution of the struggle between socialism and the existing order of society has been so important, so significant, as the tragedy of Chicago.”[4] According to the historian Paul Avrich, pamphlets and articles about the case and autobiographies of the martyrs appeared in every language across the world. In Europe, over twenty-four cities boasted sizeable protests in support of the Haymarket Martyrs.[5] Famous anarchists like Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Ricardo Flores Magón all attribute the Haymarket uprising to their radicalization. Moreover, it was not only Europe that celebrated the Haymarket Martyrs. The Times of London reported protests in Cuba, Peru, and Chile.[6] Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was in Mexico on May Day, 1921, and wrote that their May Day was expressly in honor of “the killing of the workers in Chicago for demanding the eight-hour day.”[7] More to this point, during a trip to Mexico in 1939, Oscar Neebe’s grandson was shown a mural by Diego Rivera in the Palace of Justice depicting the Haymarket Martyrs.[8] The international significance of the Haymarket Martyrs was undeniable in the hearts and imagination of all of the Left and is a significant element in the success of May Day.

The success of May Day internationally is thanks to the slain anarchists yet Marxist leadership intentionally omitted the significance of the Haymarket Martyrs to further purge anarchism from the historical record. In 1889, just a few years after the execution, the Marxist International Socialist Congress, who would later form the “Second International,” chose May 1st to celebrate international workers. However, nowhere in the Second International’s proclamation was the slightest mention of anarchism or the Haymarket Martyrs’ sacrifice for the eight-hour workday. The historian Philip Foner in 1969 therefore needed to write an entire book to remind the reader that other than pushing for the eight-hour workday, the secondary purpose of the establishment of International Workers Day on May 1st was to honor the Haymarket Martyrs. He argues “there is little doubt that everyone associated with the resolution passed by the Paris Congress knew of the May 1st demonstrations and strikes for the eight-hour day in 1886 in the United States … and the events associated with the Haymarket tragedy.” [9]

This slight against anarchists should come as no surprise considering the Second International broke with the First International Workingmen’s Association to exclude anarchists. The few anarchist members that refused to leave the Second International were barred from contributing. Member William Morris reveals, “expressions of anarchist ideas were often shouted down, and in one incident Francesco Saverio Merlino faced violence from the other delegates.”[10] The later Soviets were no stranger to historical revisionism either. Whether it is Stalin painting himself into pictures alongside Lenin or more typically painting out figures, like Trotsky, from the historical narrative. Famous member of the Communist Party USA’s central committee and founder of International Publishing, Alexander Trachtenberg, published the definitive “History of May Day” in 1932 and did not mention the word anarchism once.[11] Therefore, the Marxists of the Second international developed the May Day holiday to appropriate the international success of the anarchist Haymarket martyrs, while actively excluding anarchist thought from their sphere of influence.

Rosa Luxemburg also actively excluded mentioning the Haymarket Martyrs, which prominent Social Democrat publications like Jacobin choose to publish to further marginalize anarchist ideas. In 2016, Jacobin magazine published Luxemburg’s “What are the Origins of May Day.” In this article, Luxemburg argued that in 1856, the Australian workers call for complete work stoppages in support for the 8-hour workday influenced the American and then International development of May Day.[12] She claims that the Australians call to action was the primary source of inspiration for The International Workers Congress in 1890. While this is most likely true, she does not mention anarchists at all in her story. Not only did Luxemburg choose to ignore the impact of the Haymarket anarchists, but Jacobin’s intentional publication of her work in 2016 illustrated this same interest in erasure. Therefore, it becomes clear that both the Communists and the contemporary Social Democrats reinterpret history in order to ignore the global impact of anarchism on the working-class.

This active historical revisionism from popular Marxists is what makes May Day speeches calling for “left unity” ridiculous. Let us, for a moment, ignore the legacy of anarchist oppression from the Soviet Union to Cuba. The fact that both the Second International to contemporary Marxists willfully ignore the centrality of anarchism to organized labor and the establishment of the eight-hour workday is ahistorical. The fact that they suppress anarchist history and call for unity on the day that anarchist ancestors gave their lives for labor’s cause is bullshit. The eight-hour work day was a compromise for the abolition of waged labor. Let us not compromise our principles again by unifying with Marxists that work to undermine us at every opportunity.

[1] August Spies, “The Dies are Cast!”Arbeiter-Zeitung (May 1, 1886)

[2] August Spies, “Revenge,” Arbeiter-Zeitung (May 3, 1886)

[3] Philip Foner, “Editor’s Intro” in The Haymarket Autobiographies ed. Philip Foner (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 12.

[4] Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 436.

[5] Philip Foner, May Day (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1986), 45-46.

[6] Foner, May Day, 45-46.

[7] Dave Roediger, “Mother Jones & Haymarket”, in Haymarket Scrapbook ed. Franklin Rosemont, David Roediger (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2011), 213.

[8] Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 436.

[9] Phillip Foner, May Day, 42.

[10] William Morris, “Impressions of the Paris Congress: II,” Marxists.org (Retrieved May 4, 2022) https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1889/commonweal/08-paris-congress.html

[11] Alexander Thrachtenberg, “The History of May Day” Marxist.org (accessed May 5, 2022) https://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/articles/tracht.html

[12] Rosa Luxemburg, “What are the Origins of May Day?” Jacobin, May 1, 2016 (Accessed May 2, 2022) https://jacobinmag.com/2016/05/may-day-rosa-luxemburg-haymarket

[syrupsyche]

Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white plumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on a velvet table, beside a marble chimney-piece, insist gently on demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians. — les mis, 4.1.5

This entire chapter was fascinating as we get to see a glimpse of how the workingmen gear up to gather resources for an uprising. But this particular passage towards the end intrigues me the most; it expands upon Enjolras' role as the necessary violence needed to see a revolution succeed and even parallels some of the language from his introduction (Enjolras' "capable of being terrible" with the men who are "ferocious and terrifying"). This passage helps to enforce what exactly is "terrible" about Enjolras: it is not that he can be a horrible person— which is our contemporary take on the word 'terrible'— but rather, that he is capable of making terrible decisions that many cannot, in order to achieve freedom and civilization.

We can also see that like Enjolras, Hugo dislikes the violence that the men have to commit, calling them barbarians, but ultimately prefers them to the "gentle" bourgeoisie who are stuck in and perpetuates the past. He ends off by saying that "we should choose the barbarians" for they fight for freedom despite the violence they produce. This foreshadows Enjolras' Cabuc speech at the barricades later: "Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee". He knows himself to be one of these "barbarians" and like Hugo, hates what he has to do. But he and Hugo knows that it has to be done.

[chez-cinnamon]

Can one say Frank has a type? Big Buff Workingmen?

He really does have a type nhgngnggf- but honestly he has good tastes!

[argyrocratie]

-Adhemar Schwitzguebel, “The Question of Public Services Before the International" (1875):

"To rationally resolve the problem of social reorganization, it was not necessary to ask "by who and how public services will be provided in the new social organization", but ask what would be the bases of the new society.

Once the question was thus posed, we only had to open the history of the International Workingmen's Association, and here we found our answers.

Indeed, two principles, of immense historical consequence, emerged from the debates and internal struggles which agitated our Association: the principle of collective property, as an economic basis of the new social organization, and the principle of autonomy and federation, as the grouping basis of individuals and human communities.

(...)

Reasoning rationally, we should have said to ourselves: We find ourself in the presence of the need to transform individual property into collective property: What is the most practical way to accomplish this transformation? - It’s for the workers to seize directly the instruments of work, which they have operate for the benefit of the bourgeois and which they must now operate for their own benefit.

This revolutionary measure is superior in practice to all the decrees of the dictatorial assemblies which would believe themselves authorized to direct the Revolution or the full emancipation of the working classes; and the spontaneous action of the popular masses, from where it can only come out, is, from the first acts of the Revolution, the practical affirmation of the principle of autonomy and federation, which becomes the basis of any social grouping. With the economic privileges of the bourgeoisie, sank, in this revolutionary storm, all the institutions of the State by means of which the bourgeoisie maintains its privileges.

Let us now study the consequences, from the point of view of social reorganization, of such a revolution. In any locality, the different trades are masters of the situation: in such industry, the tools used are of minimal value; in another it is of considerable value and of more general utility; whether the group of producers employed in this industry must own the tools used, this property can create a monopoly for a group of workers, to the detriment of other groups. The revolutionary necessities, which pushed the working groups to identical action, also dictate to them federation pacts, by means of which they mutually ensure the conquests of the Revolution; these pacts, necessarily, will be communal, regional, international, and will contain sufficient guarantees so that no group can monopolize the benefits of the revolution. This is how collective property seems to us to have to be first of all communal, then regional and even international, depending on the development and more or less general importance of such branch of human activity, such natural wealth, such instruments of work accumulated by a previous labour.

(...)

Let us clearly note the essential difference between the Workers' State and the Federation of Communes. The State determines what is a public service and the organization of this public service: there you have human activity regulated. In the Federation of Communes, today the shoemaker works at home in his room; tomorrow, by the application of some discovery, the production of shoes can be increased a hundredfold and simplified at the same time: the shoemakers then unite, federate, establish their workshops, and thus enter into the general activity. It is the same for all branches of human activity: what is restricted is organized in a restricted way, what is general, in a general way, both in groups and in Communes and Federations. It is the experience, the development of every day life, put at the service of human freedom and activity."

[isa-ah]

can ANYONE find that old post that's like "overalls were invented to stop wayward manlets from sucking workingmen's dick on the clock" or whatever I need it. desperately

[darkmaga-retard]

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/08/17/for-over-150-years-democratic-party-operatives-have-infiltrated-coopted-and-destroyed-independent-political-movements-in-the-u-s/

For Over 150 Years, Democratic Party Operatives Have Infiltrated, Coopted and Destroyed Independent Political Movements in the U.S.

By

 Jeremy Kuzmarov

 -

 August 17, 2024

When will people on the left get smart and build the wherewithal to prevent this from happening yet again?

William A. A. Carsey was a covert operative working for the Democratic Party in the late 19th century, who infiltrated labor organizations and other independent political groups with the goal of sabotaging them, coopting their messaging, and siphoning votes to the Democratic Party.

Mark A. Lause, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Cincinnati, has written an illuminating biography of Carsey called, Counterfeiting Labor’s Voice: William A. A. Carsey and the Shaping of American Reform Politics.

Lause calls Carsey a “pioneer of modern astro-turfing.”

He says that Carsey foreshadowed modern-day Democratic Party covert operators who have transformed the Green Party into an “allied outrider of the Democratic Party” and set up front groups—like MoveOn.org and Brand New Congress—whose primary purpose has been to channel discontented voters into the Democratic Party.[1]

When Carsey joined the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) in 1872-73, he tellingly functioned as an agent provocateur urging self-destructive confrontation with the police.[2] Carsey also promoted conservative platforms in other labor organizations of which he was part.[3]

Born to immigrant parents on New York’s Lower East Side in 1841, Carsey played professional baseball before serving in the Union Army in the Civil War. Afterwards, he embellished his war record, claiming to have served in General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea.[4]

Following the end of the war, Carsey became active in union politics as a bricklayer and builder and became associated with the Democratic Party’s Tammany Hall political machine, which dominated New York City politics through patronage.

[eaglesnick]

THE BIG CON: VOTE REFORM, VOTE BIG BUSINESS

A vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is essentially a vote for big business and the super-rich.

Reform promises to lift 7 million people from paying tax at the lower end of the pay scale to  “save every worker almost £1500 per year.” Although I am sure this saving for low earners would be very welcome, it is the rich who benefit most from Reform’s income tax proposals.

 At the moment people earning over £50,000 pay a 40% tax rate on earnings above this figure. The Reform Party promise to raise the threshold to £70,000, a saving of £3,588 a year for the 15% richest people in the country.

Reform and the far-right favour business over individual workers.  It is therefore no surprise that Corporations are to receive the biggest tax breaks. Corporation tax will be reduced from 25% to 20% for the first 5 years, and then down to 15% after that.

For year ending 2022/23 corporation tax brought in £79.9billion. Under Reform, corporations would be in receipt of tax breaks worth £47.94billion. In November 2022, State of Tax Justice reported that

…”the world was losing over $483 billion a year in tax to multinational corporations and wealthy individuals using tax havens to underpay tax. That’s equivalent to losing a nurse’s yearly salary to a tax haven every second.” 

The only reason Reform would want to legitimise corporate tax avoidance is because Reform is essentially a political party for the already wealthy. They might throw a few crumbs to the ordinary worker but the real rewards are to go to the rich and powerful.

Many large corporations are foreign owned so  tax breaks for big business are just as likely to go to overseas shareholders as they are to UK owners. Does the British taxpayer really want to be subsidising foreign share ownership by cutting tax revenues?

Richard Tice, leader of Reform until replaced by Nigel Farage a few days ago, is a multi-millionaire who made his money in property development.  Both he and Farage have their own TV shows on GB News, which is bankrolled by the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Marshal and the Dubai based investment company Legartum, founded by New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler who made his fortune in Russian gas.

Reform's links to the super-rich goes further. Multi-millionaire Jeremy Hosking has given £2.578,000 to Reform coffers. Is it coincidence he is funding a party that campaigns to scrap UK emission targets when he is “the director of a company with tens of millions of pounds invested in oil and gas” ? (Open Democracy: 22/03/22). I think not.

Another major donor to Reform is the ex-Bullingdon Club member George Farmer. (Other members include David Cameron and George Osborne the architects of Tory Austerity and the liar Boris Johnson who brought us Party Gate). An “ardent supporter of Donald Trump”, Farmer was CEO of the far-right platform Parler, and is married to Candice Owens, a woman who “promotes far-right ideologies”, In 2023 he joined the board of GB News.

The biggest single donor to Reform according to Electoral Commission records is Chris Harborne, handing over £10 million to Brexit/Reform. Harborne owes his fortune to the sale of aviation fuel and technology investments. He gained notoriety when his name appeared multiple times in the Panama Papers. These documents revealed:

 “…off-shore holdings of world political leaders, links to global scandals, and details of  hidden financial dealings of fraudsters, drug traffickers, billionaires, celebrities, sports stars and more”. (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: 03/03/2016)

These wealthy backers of Reform are not spending millions of pounds in order to benefit ordinary workingmen and women. They see these millions as an investment, an investment on which they expect a return for their money.

[thecatholicbozo]

"In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion.

Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men.

To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself."

-Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, Paragraph 4, 1891