- Jahrgang 68 (2023)
- Vol. 68 (2023)
- >
- Ausgabe 4
- Nr. 4
- >
- Seiten 509 - 525
- pp. 509 - 525
The Limitations of a “Workingmen’s Democracy”: The Industrial Workers of the World and the Roots of “Solidarity” in the United States
Seiten 509 - 525
DOI https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2023/4/9
open-access
This publication is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 4.0.
The mythology of American democracy, that concept that the United States was formed as a contract among free and equal men, has uniquely shaped the American labor movement. Nineteenth-century trade unions and labor parties demanded higher wages and better working conditions but implicitly revered the systems of White supremacy and settler colonialism. The American Federation of Labor, the largest U.S. trade union federation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thwarted efforts to build a labor party or stir working-class consciousness across the lines of race, gender, or skill. Trade union leaders largely opted to demand improvements to contracts on the basis of White male respectability. In the early twentieth century, collaborative work between the Industrial Workers of the World and the Roman Catholic Church gave birth to new American concepts of human rights and international solidarity, ideas that offered a real counterpoint to the concept of democracy revered within the American parliamentary system. Father Hagerty, author of several founding documents for the Wobblies, including his famous “Wheel of Fortune,” was one important figure who brought European concepts of solidarity and human rights into the American mainstream.
1 “Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men’s International Association.” The Bee-Hive Newspaper 1864. Print.
2 American Labor Year Book, 1916–1917. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1917. Print.
3 Blum, Edward J., and Paul Harvey. The Color of Christ the Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2014. Print.
4 Botham, Fay. Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, and American Law. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2009. Print.
5 Brissenden, Paul Frederick. IWW: A Study of American Syndicalism. New York: Columbia UP, 1919. Print.
6 Buhle, Paul. From the Knights of Labor to the New World Order: Essays on Labor and Culture. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1997. Print.
7 ---. Marxism in the United States a History of the American Left. London: Verso, 1987. Print.
8 Chacón, Justin Akers. Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class. Chicago, IL: Haymarket, 2018. Print.
9 Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.
10 Cole, Peter. Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. Print.
11 Coles, Robert. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. New York: Hachette, 1999. Print.
12 Costaguta, Lorenzo. Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2023. Print.
13 Cunzer, A. T. “The Negro or the Race Problem.” International Socialist Review (1903): 261-64. Print.
14 Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist. New York: Harper and Row, 1952. Print.
15 “Declaration of Principles of the Social Democracy of America.” The Social Democrat July 1897. Print.
16 “Declaration of Principles of the Social Democratic Party.” Social Democratic Herald July 1898. Print.
17 Detloff, Dean. “May Day Saint: The Radical Ministry of Fr. Thomas Hagerty.” Commonweal 146.9 (2019): n. pag. Print.
18 Doherty, Robert E. “Thomas J. Hagerty, the Church and Socialism.” Labor History 3.1 (1962): 39-56. Print.
19 Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. New York: Quadrangle, 1969. Print.
20 “El Reino Socialista.” El Nuevo Mexicano. 30 Mar. 1912. Print.
21 Ely, Richard T. Report of the Organization of the American Economic Association. Baltimore, MD: Murphy, 1887. Print.
22 “Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union.” Journal of United Labor. (Nov. / Dec. 1881). Print.
23 “Federation’s Efforts.” American Federationist. July 1898. Print.
24 Fink, Leon. Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.
25 ---. Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1985. Print.
26 Foner, Philip. Organized Labor and the Black Worker: 1619–1981. Chicago, IL: Haymarket, 1974. Print.
27 Foster, Frank. “Trade Unionism and Social Reform.” The American Federationist 5.3 (1900): 64-67. Print.
28 Gage, Beverly. The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.
29 Gerteis, Joseph. Class and the Color Line Interracial Class Coalition in the Knights of Labor and the Populist Movement. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007. Print.
30 Gilmore, Glenda, and Thomas Sugrue. These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890–Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. Print.
31 Goldstene, Claire. The Struggle for America’s Promise: Equal Opportunity at the Dawn of Corporate Capital. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014. Print.
32 Green, Archie, et al., eds. The Big Red Songbook: 250+ IWW Songs! Repr. ed. Chicago, IL: Charles Kerr, 2007. Print.
33 Green, James R. The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2015. Print.
34 ---. Grassroots Socialism; Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895–1943. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1978. Print.
35 Gregory, David L. “Dorothy Day, Workers’ Rights and Catholic Authenticity.” 26.5 (1999): 1371-92. Print.
36 Hagerty, Thomas J., and William E. Trautmann. “Catholic Workingmen and Their Relationship to the Social Movement.” Chicago Socialist 5 (1903): 2-3. Print.
37 ---. “The Mission of the Working Class.” One Big Union: An Outline of Possible Industrial Organizations. By William E. Trautmann. Chicago: C. H. Kerr, 1986. 28. Print.
38 Hall, Greg. Harvest Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World and Agricultural Laborers in the American West, 1905–1930. Corvallis: Oregon State UP, 2001. Print.
39 Huber Tripp, Anne. The IWW and the Patterson Silk Strike of 1913. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987. Print.
40 Johnson, Oakley C. Marxism in United States History before the Russian Revolution (1876–1917). New York: Humanities, 1974. Print.
41 Johnson, Paul. A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. Print.
42 Johnston, Robert. The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2003. Print.
43 Jones, William. “‘Nothing Special to Offer the Negro’: Revisiting the ‘Debsian View’ of the Negro Question.” International Labor and Working-Class History 74.1 (2008): 212–24. Print.
44 Karson, Marc. American Labor Unions and Politics: 1900–1918. Boston: Beacon, 1958. Print.
45 Kiser, Gregory G. “The Socialist Party in Arkansas, 1900–1912.” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 40.2 (1981): 119-53. Print.
46 Kornbluh, Joyce L., ed. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology. Chicago, IL: CKH, 2011. Print.
47 Krugler, David F. 1919: The Year of Racial Violence. How African Americans Fought Back. New York: Cambridge UP, 2015. Print.
48 Lazerow, Jama. Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1995. Print.
49 Lee, Erika. America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States. New York: Basic, 2021. Print.
50 Lipsitz, Georg. “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American Studies.” American Quarterly 47.3 (1995): 369-87. Print.
51 Marti, Donald B. “Answering the Agrarian Question: Socialists, Farmers, and Algie Martin Simons.” Agricultural History 65.3 (1991): 53-69. Print.
52 Maurin, Peter. Catholic Radicalism: Phrased Essays for the Green Revolution. New York: Catholic Worker, 1949. Print.
53 ---. Easy Essays. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2003. Print.
54 McCartin, Joseph. Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1919. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998. Print.
55 McWhirter, Cameron. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011. Print.
56 Messer-Kruse, Timothy. The Yankee International: Marxism and the American Reform Tradition, 1848–1876. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2009. Print.
57 Miller, Sally M., “Red and Black: The Socialist Party and the Negro, 1901–1920.” Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Early Twentieth-Century American Socialism. Ed. Sally M. Miller. New York: Garland, 1996. 33-46. Print.
58 Miller, Sally M., ed. Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Early Twentieth-Century American Socialism. New York: Garland, 1996. Print.
59 Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925. New York: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print.
60 Morgan, Ted. Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Random House, 2020. Print.
61 “Mr. Bryan Discute El Crecimiento Del Socialismo.” El Voz Del Pueblo 26 Dec. 1908: 2. Print.
62 “Negro Resolution Adopted by Indianapolis Convention.” Missouri Socialist August 1901: 1. Print.
63 Pehl, Matthew. The Making of Working-Class Religion. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2016. Print.
64 Pesch, Heinrich. Liberalism, Socialism, and Christian Social Order. 1899. Trans. Rupert Ederer. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2001. Print.
65 Renshaw, Patrick. The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW and Syndicalism in the United States. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1967. Print.
66 Roediger, David R. “Making Solidarity Uneasy: Cautions on a Keyword from Black Lives Matter to the Past.” American Quarterly 68.2 (2018): 223-48. Print.
67 ---. Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All. New York: Verso, 2014. Print.
68 ---. Towards the Abolition of Whiteness. New York: Verso, 1994. Print.
69 ---. Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso, 1991. Print.
70 Rosswurm, Steve. “The Catholic Church and the Left-Led Unions: Labor Priests, Labor Schools, and the ACTU.” The CIO’s Left-Led Unions. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1992. 119-38. Print.
71 Scibilia, Dominic. “The Christological Character of Labor: A Theological Rehabilitation of Mother Jones.” Social Activism 13.3 (1995): 49-61. Print.
72 Seaton, Douglas P. Catholics and Radicals: The Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the American Labor Movement, from Depression to Cold War. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1981. Print.
73 Shepherd, William J. “The Archivist’s Nook: Digital Rebirth—Labor Collections at Catholic University.” The Catholic University of America. 25 Jan. 2018. Web. 15 Sept. 2023. https://www.lib.cua.edu/wordpress/newsevents/10106/.
74 “Solidarity.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP, n. d. Web. 28 July 2023. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/solidarity_n?tab=factsheet#22032438.
75 Stansell, Christine. American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.
76 Sullivan, James William. Socialism as an Incubus of the Labor Movement. New York: Volunteer, 1909. Print.
77 Sutton, William. Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1998. Print.
78 Tax, Meredith. The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880–1917. New York: Monthly Review, 1980. Print.
79 “The Socialist Platform.” The Representative 1901. Print.
80 Trautmann, William E. One Big Union: An Outline of Possible Industrial Organizations. Chicago: C. H. Kerr, 1986. Print.
81 ---. “One Big Union.” 1919. Marxist Internet Archive, n. d. Web. 5 Oct. 2023. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/unions/iww/1919/obu1919.htm.
82 Trollinger, Abigail. Becoming Entitled: Relief, Unemployment, and Reform during the Great Depression. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2020. Print.
83 Weir, Robert E. Beyond the Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. Print.
84 Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford UP, 1984. Print.
85 Winters, Donald. The Soul of the Wobblies: The IWW, Religion, and American Culture in the Progressive Era, 1905–1917. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985. Print.
86 Woods, Justus. “The Present Slavery—The Coming Freedom.” Journal of United Labor 5.10 (1884): 795-96. Print.
87 Zimmer, Kenyon. Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2015. Print.
