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This is a multi-part limited series looking at labor history in the United States from 1492 to present day. This series uses a Marxist lens to provide context for the relationship between labor and capital throughout time as well as the highlights of US labor organizing.
Episodes
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Introduction
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
In this introduction, I outline the goals for the series and take a look at what Marx thought about the potential role of labor unions in a socialist revolution.
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Episode 3: The Gilded Age
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
The free labor ideology that took hold during Reconstruction led to rampant inequality, workplace abuse and violence, and financial instability. In this era (1869--1886), workers began to organize and fight back.
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Episode 1: American Slavery
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
The roots of American capitalism lie in forced labor. Beginning with Native American slavery in Spanish America, forced labor changed shape as British North America came to rely on enslaved people and a violent racial caste system. By the 1800s, one of the cruelest, most gruesome institutions in human history enriched the white Western world.
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Episode 2: Reconstruction
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
With chattel slavery abolished, workers and capital grapple over the new form of labor. Centers on an analysis of the free labor ideology.
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Bonus: Dialectical Materialism for Dummies
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Using the slave labor / free labor dichotomy, I clarify what leftists mean when we talk about dialectical materialism.
Thursday Mar 11, 2021
Episode 4: Labor Movement and Labor War
Thursday Mar 11, 2021
Thursday Mar 11, 2021
Between the years of 1886 and 1929, organized labor takes on a variety of forms. Craft unionism springs up in the American Federation of Labor, and radicals form the Industrial Workers of the World. Capital responds with both persuasion and violence.
Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Episode 5: The New Deal
Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Labor movement since the 1880s led to the state recognizing the demands of workers. In this episode I discuss what workers gained and what they conceded to get a measure of protection from the government.
Wednesday May 12, 2021
Bonus episode: Bias in labor historiography
Wednesday May 12, 2021
Wednesday May 12, 2021
This bonus episode examines the biases of labor historians, especially those of the New Left from the 1960s and 1970s. Writing from a perspective that privileged militant action among wage laborers in factory jobs, these seminal historians reproduced a societal bias against traditionally feminine work.
Tuesday Aug 03, 2021
Episode 6 pt. 1: Labor and the Civil Rights Movement
Tuesday Aug 03, 2021
Tuesday Aug 03, 2021
This episode examines the impact of the coalition between organized labor and the Civil Rights Movement. It also looks at farmworker organizing in California.
Wednesday Aug 11, 2021
Episode 6 pt. 2: Deindustrialization 1947--1981
Wednesday Aug 11, 2021
Wednesday Aug 11, 2021
After World War II breaking the power of organized labor was a top priority for US companies. Deindustrialization was the process by which firms automated their operations and moved them to parts of the country with no union presence. At the end of the episode I examine some explanations for the decline of Big Labor.