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TL
Chuck0 wrote:
> Tom Lehman wrote:
> >
> > Chuck, the problem here is the past actions of the anarchists. Take for
> > example Russian anarchist super star Alexander Berkman who decided to do the
> > steelworkers a favor and assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead
> > strike. All Berkman managed to accomplish was to turn public opinion against
> > the locked out steelworkers of the Amalgamated Association of Iron &
> > Steelworkers the predecessor of the USWA, and set the cause of unionism in the
> > steel industry back about 40 years!
>
> Wow, I didn't know that Berkman set the cause of unionism back that far!
> Do the labor historians know about this? I thought that the cause of
> revolutionary unionism was defeated by other measures, such as the
> embrace of the reformist AFL/CIO by the capitalists who saw the
> handwriting on the wall.
>
> Berkman did something that was tactically foolish, even if it was the
> moral thing to do. He did his time in jail and I think all anarchists
> since that time have learned that propaganda by the deed is pretty
> pointless. You kill one leader and another one takes their place.
>
> > In the spring of 1917 a gang of anarchists decided to rob the bank in a small
> > mining town about 5 miles south of downtown Pittsburgh. Five of the six or
> > seven anarchists were killed in the ensuing gunfight with the local
> > citizenry. One or two of the anarchists did get away with cash and it was
> > suspected that they had fled to Russia to join the Russian revolution. Since
> > I grew up in this neighborhood, when I was a kid I knew a few of the old
> > timers who had participated in the gunfight with the anarchists. These men
> > were either union men or pro-union and friends of Phil Murray and John Lewis.
>
> Cool! Never heard about that. I'll have to look that one up.
>
> BTW, the anarchist Bonnot Gang invented the getaway car.
>
> > Growing up I also knew fellows of Russian/Polish descent and Italian descent
> > whose grandfathers or great grandfathers had been influenced by anarchists.
> > Some of the scrapes their grandfathers had gotten into weren't very pretty and
> > caused their mainstream union brothers big trouble.
>
> Well, the mainstream union boys have caused all of us trouble for the
> last 60 years. They have been sitting in the capitalist's laps for far
> too long.
>
> > So, all in all the anarchist movement in the past has done nothing, but, play
> > into the hands of the Chicago school's analysis of the American labor
> > movement. The caricature of the foreign born and foreign influenced bomb
> > thrower.
>
> Are you a mainstream journalist or something? Do you have any
> understanding of how the mechanics of red-baiting work? It seems like
> you are pretty knowledgeable aboput labor history, yet believe what the
> boss press wants everybody to believe. The press inflated the incidents
> of propaganda by the deed way out of proportion to the number that were
> actually committed.
>
> > Max and I have been around in the past on this whole question of how you
> > figure these reactionary libertine/libertarian/anarchist types too. Like the
> > Cato and Heritage Institutes.
>
> Well, I hope you are sitting down. On Saturday night I had dinner with a
> writer from Reason magazine.
>
> OK, you can stand up now.
>
> Jesse and I have some common goals, but we do disagree fundamentally on
> some things. He's kind of in the borderlands of the overlap between
> anarchists and right-libertarians. Normally, I can't stand Cato-type
> libertarians, but I have met a few that I like.
>
> --
> Chuck0
>
> Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
> http://www.infoshop.org/
>
> Leonard Peltier Freedom Month
> Executive Clemency For Peltier!
> http://www.freepeltier.org/lpfreedommonth.html
>
> Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!
> http://www.infoshop.org/gulag/mumia_idx.html
>
> "A society is a healthy society only to the degree
> that it exhibits anarchistic traits."
> - Jens Bjørneboe