Comments by "BlackFlagsNRoses" (@blackflagsnroses6013) on "Krystal Ball: 65% of Americans Approve Of Labor Unions As Economy Implodes" video.

  1. Americans forget that labor organization in this country was vehemently socialist. The biggest Union was the IWW Syndicalist organization. There were calls to end land monopoly, rent, interest, profit. Capitalists have successfully demonized socialism as “un-American” spitting on the graves of American socialists that bled to bring capital to heel
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  2. Here’s the thing, unions and labor organization is left wing. There’s a misconception of left wing meaning social progressive and right wing meaning conservative. No! Left wing means less authority and greater equality. Right wing means greater authority and hierarchy. Ever since the origins of left-right in the French National Assembly. Yes you can be progressive or conservative but left wing. And labor power was fundamentally a socialist revolution. Labor sought to end land monopoly, abolish usuries of rent, profit, and interest. To emancipate labor from capital. To destroy capitalism for either Syndicalist communism or market socialism as the long game. Receiving benefits short game. The IWW, socialist parties, communist parties, Knights of Labor etc... socialism was the battle cry of ending wage slavery. It’s amazing how this history is distorted and unknown today.
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  3. Labor was socialist. No land monopoly. No rent. No interest. No profit. Syndicalism. Etc.... It wasn’t until social democratic reformism and liberal corporatism that labor power was severed into complacency of welfare statism and class collaboration. Return to the roots of class struggle and workers emancipation from capital
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  4. Erick Guzman I don’t know the Individualist Free Market Anarchists (libertarian socialists) were supportive of the Knights of Labor. True not all labor unions were socialists but they found allies among socialists. And there were calls for preventing capitalism in the mid 19th century and later to become a post capitalist society. Such as the Mill girls that wasn’t about “the mills belong to those that work them.” Several labor unions were about labor rights and collective bargaining, but they fought alongside socialists against the capital ruling interests. And several unions were socialist. The Haymarket massacre really alienated labor unions from socialist radicals but that turned out to be hurtful as capitalists were able to get more out of collective bargaining than labor wanted. The State was successful in breaking up the coalition of labor organization. Also early on Knights of Labor were calling for no rent. The coalition was diverse however Jo Labadie was already an anarchist by this time, having been influenced by Benjamin Tucker. He was also very active with the Knights of Labor and had been in the forefront of labor agitation in Detroit for several years. And you’re right those workers had concern for family, culture (a working class culture), and religion was personal. The workers clashed with the Church when they tried to calm the workers and said their desires are “pie in the sky.” This influencing the song pie in the sky in protest. Here’s the thing, leftism isn’t about being socio-culturally progressive or conservative. It is about wanting less authority and greater egalitarianism. Hence why anarchism is noted as the most far left position.
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  5. MajorLeague there were black workers in socialist parties. Black coal miners fought in Blair Mountain. It was not the fellow underclasses that enforced hierarchy on minorities, but the state and privileged elite themselves. The slave owners, the industrialists. The State enforced the prejudices and maintained it via propaganda to the masses to divide the lower classes. Owenites weren’t successful in America. But they did inspire Josiah Warren and the libertarian socialist free market anti-capitalism. The anarchist strain that fought against the rise of capitalism. Which was fostered by the Republican Party of industrial capitalists. Even Dubois said that black folk were right back into slavery with wage labor. Something socialist movements struggled against as they sought it’s replacement with worker’s associations. New Deal was liberal corporatism not socialism. It’s why Mussolini compared the New Deal to his Fascist Corporatism.
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