Upstream - [TEASER] International Workers' Day w/ John from Working Class History

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

You can listen to the full episode "International Workers' Day" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you. Militant workers, strikes, murder, dynamite, massacres—working class history is stained with the blood of martyrs and the atrocities of the ruling classes—a centuries-long struggle of class war that began at the dawn of capitalism itself. On today’s episode we're recognizing and celebrating International Workers’ Day, held every year on this day—May 1st. The history of this day goes all the way back to the late 1800s, and yes, it includes massacres and strikes and dynamite. It's a story about class war—quite literally. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to tell us about it. John is a researcher at Working Class History—an online people's history project that includes a daily calendar of working class historical events, a longform and a daily podcast, a stories app, a map app, and much more.  In this episode John recounts the harrowing, violent, and sometimes humorous stories of how International Workers’ Day came to be what it is today. We explore this day’s legacy from the 1880s to the present, what working conditions were like in the late 19th century and how they resemble our current conditions, and why it's important to keep the legacy and lessons from this important day in our hearts, minds—and in our actions. Further resources: Working Class History Working Class History podcasts The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, by Peter Linebaugh Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters Related Episodes: Upstream: Abolish the Police Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and to provide most of our content for free so we can offer political education media to the public and build our movement. education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation. No one knows who throws the bomb, no one knows who throws it and there's conflicting theories one way or the other. But one cop was killed and some others were injured.

Then the police pull out their guns and they start shooting wildly into the crowd and each other. It's possible that some armed workers might have fired on the police as well, but that's unclear. What is clear is that the police did admit that they shot each other. By the time the smoke had cleared, there were seven police dead and four workers dead. And the press then used this as an opportunity to condemn the strike as a whole and the Chicago police use it as an opportunity to repress the anarchist movement in the city. They started raiding meeting places and rounding up anarchists in particular and often without warrants.

You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond.

Militant workers, strikes, murder, dynamite, massacres. Working class history is stained with the blood of martyrs and the atrocities of the ruling classes. A centuries-long struggle of class war that began at the dawn of capitalism itself. On today's episode, we're recognizing and celebrating International Workers Day, held every year on this day, May 1st. The history of this day goes all the way back to the late 1800s and yes it does include massacres, strikes, and dynamite. It's a story about class war, quite literally, and we brought on the perfect guest to tell us all about it. John is the researcher

at Working Class History, an online people's history project that includes a daily calendar of working class historical events, a long form and a daily podcast, a stories app, a map app, and much more. In this episode, John recounts the harrowing, violent, and sometimes humorous stories of how

International Workers' Day came to be what it is today. We explore this day's legacy from the 1800s to the present, what working conditions were like in the late 19th century and how they resemble our current conditions, and why it's important to keep the legacy and lessons from this important day in our hearts, minds, and in our actions. And now, here's Robert in have you back on the show. It's lovely to be back. How have you been? I have been well, very busy, but doing well. The last time you were on the show was for our episode

on abolishing the police, our documentary. And I think we got a lot of great feedback about your role in that. So yeah, it's awesome to have you back on. Oh cool, yeah, well, I think it was a really good episode, especially with all the other guests. It was a very well put together episode. So yeah, thanks very much for having us back.

Maybe just to start, for folks that missed the Abolish the Police episode, maybe you could introduce yourself for people and tell us too a little bit about your organization, Working Class History, for listeners who may not be familiar with the project. Hey, yeah, so Working Class History, we're a collective of kind of worker activist people, and we're

doing what we can to research, uncover, and popularize our collective history of struggles for a better world. So to this aim, we've got a number of different aspects of the project, including social media accounts, an online website and map containing all of our historical stories. We also do some podcasts, so a long-form podcast called Working Class History, where we look more in detail at some of the historical stories that we've got on our map to talk to primarily people who are involved in them, learn about their experiences and see what lessons we can apply from them today. Another long-form podcast called Working Class Literature taking a look at radical fiction and

culture and we recently started a daily mini podcast called On This Day in Working Class History on this day in working class history with a short story about people's history on this day anniversary each day. Like you, we are basically funded by our listeners and readers on Patreon and we do a bit of publishing as well, co-publishing some historical books and works in collaboration with PM Press, a small independent radical publisher. Amazing. Yeah, such a cool project. And I've learned so, so much from you guys. So I encourage people listening to definitely check out Working Class History. It's just like a treasure trove of really awesome stories, really inspiring. And you really realize how much of what happened centuries ago, sometimes is so related to what we're currently experiencing.

So I really appreciate that. I love history. I particularly love working class history. And so yeah, I think anybody who appreciates either of those things would get a lot out of the project. So we'll throw any links in the show notes so people can easily find you. Thanks.

I think one thing it's probably worth mentioning briefly We'll throw any links in the show notes so people can easily find you. Thanks. I think one thing it's probably worth mentioning briefly is that the name of the project is working class history, but we see all kinds of struggles against all types of oppression, exploitation, discrimination as being related to working class struggle. So, for example, pretty much any other struggle intersects with class on some level from things like reproductive rights, because obviously wealthier people, you know, no matter the legal status of abortion, wealthier people can pretty much always get them.

And also things like struggles of indigenous peoples against colonialism, in many cases, our struggles against becoming working class, our struggles against dispossession, which would force people into a position of becoming wage laborers and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it's not just about burly men in spark factories. Yeah, not like class reductionists. You guys have a lot of different diverse perspectives and class sort of being a focal point upon which all these other sorts of intersections with different identity groups and different oppressed groups kind of exist. So yeah, appreciate you making that important distinction. All right, well today we're going to be talking about today and you know since this holiday has its roots in

the 19th century before we kind of get into the the details of the history of how International Workers Day started I'm wondering if you can give us some context around the lead-up to what what will discuss in a second so. Yeah maybe by just telling us a little bit about the working conditions in sort of this period of the eighteen eighties for workers sort of like give us a little bit of context out of which the haymarket affair and all the other events that led to international workers day sprouted out of. market affair and all the other events that led to International Workers Day sprouted out of? I think in short, working conditions were bad in all kinds of different aspects. So a primary problem which the 1st of May strike that we'll talk about came from and the Haymarket Affair was related to the length of the working day. So around this time, 1880s in the US, the average contracted working hours that workers, industrial workers had according to employers was 10 hours a day,

six days a week. But this didn't include overtime. And while that was the general average in a lot of industries and specific workplaces, people work longer doing 12, 15, even 17 hours a day, six days a week. One thing that is worth pointing out, that industrial capitalist wage labor at this point in the US was quite a new thing, especially for men, because many women in the US had been working in textile factories for some time. So the first strike by factory workers in the US was in 1824 by women in Port Tuckett, our podcast episode 32 is about, and then there were strikes by women in textile mills in New England in the 1840s, 60s and so on.

But for a lot of male workers, this was a pretty new thing. And like we spoke about in the episode about the police, is kind of one of those things which to us now seems perfectly natural, like they've always been here, are actual, their social constructs which have been made by people, specifically really rich people and enforced with violence by the state. So the situation we're in now where we don't own our own means of survival, you know, most of us, so we don't own like farming land or factories or whatever. So we sell our ability to work for a living, for a wage to rich people who do own that stuff.

But now it's just obvious, isn't it? Like you go to school, you get a job, then you die. But for people back then, it was still pretty new to quite a lot of them. A lot of them didn't really like it that much. So even things like workers wanting to abolish wage labor wasn't a particularly unusual or radical demand at that time. So as an example of the kind of opinion

of a worker on their work, just before 1886, a German immigrant worker came to Cincinnati and got a job in a furniture factory. His name was Oskar Ameringer. In this capitalist factory, he found it was very different from his work back home in Germany where he worked in his father's carpenter shop, so in a kind of artisan type industry. So here's what he said, I will not do a German accent out of

respect for our German friends and listeners. I have a plugin that I can throw on that'll Germanify you, don't worry about it. Great, I think that would be quite good. Here everything was done by machine. Our only task was assembling, gluing together and finishing a chair or a table, the two specialities of the factory. Speed came first, quality of workmanship last. The work was monotonous, the hours of drudgery 10 a day, my wages a dollar a day. Also, spring was coming on, birds and blue hills beckoned and so when agitators from the Knights of Labour invaded our sweatshop preaching the divine message of Labor invaded our sweatshop, preaching the divine message of less work for more pay, I became theirs.

So that's the end of the quote. So the Knights of Labor that Oscar mentioned there was an early union and it was kind of a moderate conservative-ish one, relatively speaking. Its leader, Terence Powderley, he was very open that he didn't advocate strikes, but it had grown hugely in the run-up to 1886. So in 1884, it had 70,000 members. Two years later, that had grown to over 700,000. So a kind of tenfold increase in just a couple of years.

The industrial background of that, I think we can address more a little bit later. But this union, the Knights of Labour, its program was to abolish wage labour and instead replace it with kind of workers cooperatives and a planned economy. And this wasn't crazy talk for the time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously it wouldn't, you know obviously it wouldn't make the opinion pages of the New York Times, but in terms of working class opinion, it was not a extremist view. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with John of Working Class History. You can listen

to the full episode by becoming a Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers depending on which tier you subscribe to, but you'll also be helping keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash Upstream podcast or at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.