Why does no one ever talk about the massive labor unrest that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in America? These actions involved hundreds of thousands of workers and cost hundreds of lives, yet not even the left talks about them. Why is that? Is it because the strikers were using their 2nd Amendment rights to fight back against corporations, and therefore that sends a "dangerous" message to modern Americans? The US government also frequently intervened on behalf of corporations to violently suppress labor unrest.
The first part of this documentary deals with the coal mining conflicts.
Jack Baker
because americans have this retarded tendency to yell "muh gommunism nothing ain't free lol you don't like freedum kike?" each time you remind them there is a left side on the political spectrum
Hudson Smith
Highlighting the actions of organized labor during the the late 19th and early 20th century isn't given the light of day it deserves because we live in a second gilded age and keeping the proles divided benefits the elites
Owen Young
True, but it seems like the left itself is downplaying these previous conflicts for some reason. Is it because the violence offends the gatekeepers?
Jason Ramirez
Yes. Modern leftists are mostly kulaks or elites. They don't want any true shift in society.
Also, a study of that era would reveal that immigrants were used as surplus labor to undermine the labor movement and class solidarity.
But for the modern lefty any reduction in immigration = racism. Basically, they have more in common with upper middle class Arabs, Indians, and Chinese than with their own nations' working class.
It's ok though. True revolution will come either way...
Ryder Morgan
Neoliberals and progressives aren't the leftists of yesteryear
Noah Turner
But they do
Easton Hernandez
It's not mainstream knowledge by any means.
Chase Fisher
>But for the modern lefty any reduction in immigration = racism. Basically, they have more in common with upper middle class Arabs, Indians, and Chinese than with their own nations' working class.
I'd say this has a lot to do with the collapse of new-deal liberalism in the late 1960's or 1970's, which was a trend that had a lot of social and economic factors.
Not the least of which was the way/extent to which banking was made international in the post-ww2 world. Which gave banks the power to have a far greater say in terms of a nation's economic and political policies than they had in the past. (The reasoning is that banks could quite easily cause the price/purchasing power of your currency to plummet if they felt you were going to cause inflation, they'd do this by converting/trading one currency for another in order to preemptively "stop the bleeding" that might result)
Brandon White
>True revolution will come either way...
James James
>implying lefties have a monopoly on edge See
Austin Bell
Why/when did the left become so sissified?
Julian Jenkins
50's/60's/70's with the Red Scare but the killing blow was Reagan and the subsequent restructuring of the Democratic party
Connor Hall
Khrushchev. When Mao died it was ogre. Then people bought into Fukuyama's shit. The only way to reinvigorate the left is through ever increasing capitalism under the immortal science of Hard-Strong, Soft-Weak dialectics. Trump is therefore the true revolutionary agent we have been waiting for.
Noah Morales
likely the same reason we see the Civil Rights Movement heavily whitewashed - anything that could remotely be construed as showing violent resistance as a good thing is dangerous.
Note how the popular history of the Civil Rights Movement pretty much boils down to >MLK ran a bunch of inoffensive and nonviolent protests where a bunch of blacks just marched around with signs without bothering anyone
What little you could ascribe to the popular depiction of the early US labor movements is similar: >things were really shitty for poor workers but eventually some journalists noticed and then the government made everything better
Evan Watson
well yea nothing is free, you don’t like freedom u fckin commie kike?
Brandon James
when manual labor became less and less important
Angel Williams
>>things were really shitty for poor workers but eventually some journalists noticed and then the government made everything better
This is true, there's lots of emphasis on top-down solutions to labor issues by politicians and elites (like FDR and Teddy), and muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell (or Jacob Riis), and little attention on the Knights of Labor, the WFM, the UMW, Eugene Debs, etc. Grassroots political and social mobilizations like the Populist movement get little attention compared to middle- and upper-class Progressives, and when Populists are covered its usually derisively.
Connor Jackson
My point is that the pop-history version of events removes the violence, strife, and unrest.
If you'll forgive my being political for a second, it's something more easily shown in the criticisms of a lot of the race-relations unrest we have today. The pop-history depiction of the Civil Rights Movement gives off the impression that it was just some benign, easily ignorable peaceful movement that fixed everything. But the reality - that there was violence, and even the most benign peaceful protests very well did plenty of things to inconvenience people - isn't something that's discussed, both because it's more complex and because it legitimizes active disruption of the "peace." And because of that pop-history version of events, it's easy to dismiss any and all protests that fail to meet the impossible standard set by pop-history.
I'm less well versed in labor issues, but it seems to be a similar case - the pop-history version makes it harder for people to understand that a successful movement isn't always going to be quick and painless, and hell, it might not even be justified in all of its aims.
Colton Young
This is true. It's the same reason that the 2nd Amerndment is made into a left-right issue, despite leftists and labor unions using guns historically quite frequently and successfully, and despite the first gun laws being enacted to disarm free blacks and labor radicals.
Robert Jackson
its because the left still believes that the working class is at tremendous odds against the bourgeoisie class. They never acknowledge those who fought for liberty and equal rights, unless they fit a narrative that perpetuates a modern motive. Acknowledging those workers who fought and died to have rights within companies means that the left has to acknowledge the tremendous amount of progress that has been made by the last generations of americans. But they choose to view themselves as a victim, choose to see themselves, so egocentrically so, as the only fighters of freedom and the martyrs who will free the proletariat class from their oppressors. There is no end to this narrative. No reason no history that will shake it of its fervor
Thomas Wright
Because capitalists benefit from people thinking that it was due to benevolent cappies that we have better conditions and not because workers actually got angry, threatened elites, or even use violence to achieve their goals.
Zachary Myers
>They never acknowledge those who fought for liberty and equal rights You sound stupid as fuck m8.
Aiden Hall
It is almost as if liberals were never leftists in the first place
Dylan Adams
that's what this whole thread is about dumbass. Theres also afew republican, pro gun abolitionists extremists who are rarely mentioned and I cant even remember their names, from my experience, the black panther shit was glossed over, malcolm X also. Mainly because these historical figures blur the lines between what is conventionally seen as good and evil and its difficult to fit them into a clean cut simple image that a political party can use to their disposal
Xavier Thompson
How is he stupid?
The biggest pitfall for every revolution is making sure the new power structure is not hopelessly corrupt or tyrannical, Cromwell, Nappy, Lenin, all tossed notions of democracy to the wind and enthroned themselves. Scandinavia is often touted as successful socialism whenever Venezuela is brought up, however you are comparing 2 countries with very different economies. I'd much rather live in its "capitalist" peers like Colombia. At least at that level of socioeconomic development you need a "bourgeois democracy" to arise.
Are you going to address this important issue? Scrutiny and criticism are good things and your utopia will never come to be unless you make changes and solve this gaping flaw.
Luke Collins
that's a very recent phenomenon
Hudson Richardson
well he wanted to know why the left became so sissified lately.
Christian Murphy
Clinton and the Neoliberals. Basically LBJ's great society failed due to vietnam, and Reagan trounced the democrats, so the democratic elite moved to the center and embraced the capitalists while dropping organized labor
Charles Ward
Its own tenants of egalitarianism eat itself alive. It is inherent to communist and anarchical theologies, the suicidal desire to abolish all hierarchy collapses under its weight as ingrates flood into the open door using the philosophy as an excuse to shitpost drivel all day long.
The right is (was) able to throw out its worst elements. The left always had to take disenfranchised with an uncomfortable smile.
Noah Gutierrez
To say they are never acknowledged or discussed is completely dishonest. Malcom X? Unions of the 20th century? Who exactly are you referring to when you say that those names no longer hold any weight today in discussions of worker's rights or identity politics that are now more popular than ever before? The left loves those symbols. Are you wondering why hillary didn't bring up the Black Panthers armed patrols during the debates? Gee I don't know user. The rest of your post was such histrionic babble that it was embarrassing to read.
>your utopia will never come to be unless you make changes and solve this gaping flaw. Did you really write all that just to ask me if I would debate socialism with you.
Carson Scott
Its still extremely important for construction. The issue is that not enough youth are joining the labor work force so most of the people left in the unions are old and burned out.
Owen Baker
Not that guy but since you suddenly wanted to make this about socialism be reminded that are other (i.e. everyone else) than Lenin that seek to acquire socialism in a industrialized capitalist democracy. If anything that was what the American labor movement sort of want to accomplish.
Cooper Gomez
>It is almost as if liberals were never leftists in the first place
What are you talking about? Even most "actual" Leftists offer similar backhanded defences for immigration >"Yeah, okay, someone from an impoverished country that's happy to earn double his homeland's income in your nation probably won't be interested in class politics, but dammit he's still your ally!"
This isn't even getting into how self-proclaimed Leftists believe that racial/ethnic/religious antagonisms are exploited by capitalists to divide the working class, yet aggressively promote the diversification of their societies because - again - "they're still your allies, even if they're screaming themselves hoarse that your people are the reason everything's bad in the world"
Cooper Myers
And yet where are these mysterious American 'leftists' that you are talking about? Such detailed summary of their beliefs yet no examples of those who hold them.
Brody Gray
Strawmans aren't arguments user
Angel Walker
Bernie Sanders simultaneously criticized race to the bottom labor policies while advocating more open borders and free services for all. The two are contradictory and incompatible if the goal is to uplift native workers and citizens.
Jacob Myers
Even if we play along in thinking Bernie is a leftist, IIRC he wanted more humane treatment of immigrants and not to increase the volume.
>The two are contradictory and incompatible if the goal is to uplift native workers and citizens. It is not, empowering and unionizing the immigrants would starve off Capital's demands for more of them. If anything it is contradictory and incompatible to have close borders and capitalism.
Colton Turner
Leftists are pushing the socialist narrative not me. It has similar corruptive influence.
Unions stopped being about giving workers bargaining power in a free market and about interfering in business and intimidation. They intentionally stifled technological progress and drove businesses into the ground.
Hunter Harris
It is my general experience that most people and most schools avoid subjects like malcolm X and any gritty and mixed characters of history. The left still chooses to forget about much, atleast the progressivists
Daniel Stewart
Old school leftism is dead.
Workers know the score. It's no longer a case of capitalists' desire to exploit workers. Most workers are hardly worth the cost to employ. You need the state to step in and provide food stamps, heating oil, tax credits, and free healthcare to make a low skilled worker able to sustain themselves.
The problem isn't that elites want control of workers, the problem is increasingly that workers are superfulous.
Add mass migration into this mix and you basically make it impossible for workers to organize for a more just bargin.
Nathaniel Jones
When the working class wisened up to how shit communism really was, all that was required was to directly observe it in practice in some unfortunate country, leaving only massively out of touch uni students and upper middle class """""intellectuals""""".
Nolan Ward
They leveled up.
Benjamin Torres
This is bullshit. Some people in "Marxist-Leninist" states are still socialist or communist while opposing the regime. However, because both said regimes and anti-communists call them "not REAL communists/socialists lol" you don't hear much about them.
Julian Kelly
>Unions stopped being about giving workers bargaining power in a free market and about interfering in business and intimidation. They intentionally stifled technological progress and drove businesses into the ground.
Or.. thats how they are depicted.
Ayden Rodriguez
What are you talking about? In my public school we spent a week or so in history talking about it, and in my literature class we studied literature looking at how the industrial revolution was evil and increased the plight of the poor because it created jobs farmers voluntarily took and left their homes for. All of my middle/high school history books had at least a page or two worth spread throughout talking about Eugene V. Debs. I guess that's just going to a Northern public school, though.
Ryder Hill
It's different in the West and South.
James Wilson
i remember watching this documentary like 8 years ago
