Leftist Labor History

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.

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.

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.

With chattel slavery abolished, workers and capital grapple over the new form of labor. Centers on an analysis of the free labor ideology.

Using the slave labor / free labor dichotomy, I clarify what leftists mean when we talk about dialectical materialism.

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.

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.

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.

This episode examines the impact of the coalition between organized labor and the Civil Rights Movement. It also looks at farmworker organizing in California.

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.