thinkin through it

Several years ago was the first time I heard of J. Sakai’s Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern. Coming out during the decline of the New Communist Movement (NCM), it left an impression with members of organizations such as the Sojourner Truth Organization, some of its former members being who I […]

Recently, I came across something that mentioned an article I wrote for the Industrial Worker back in April 2012 titled ‘Some objections to Occupy May 1st‘. At the time, I was deeply involved in Occupy Minnesota’s May 1st committee, and wanted to push back on some stuff coming from other radicals and lefties in the […]

In reformatting a 1949 master’s thesis by George Pearce titled “The IWW since 1932”, the folowing part was pointed out to me Ralph Chaplin resigned as Editor of the Industrial Worker in March, 1936. He explained as follows: “This step is unavoidable. Very serious disagreement with the policy and personnel of the newly elected Administration […]

This is a section from Fighting for ourselves: Anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle, which is a large pamphlet (really, a small book) from Solidarity Federation, an aspiring anarcho-syndicalist union in the UK. One of the most valuable things in it, is the concepts and distinctions it makes between the representative function of unions, and the […]

In my last post, I briefly went over the three left communist tendencies that emerged in Europe after the Russian Revolution and World War I. One of those was The German-Dutch Left, commonly referred to as ‘council communism’. Over the years, and particularly during the past 5 or so years of efforts helping compile the […]

Old Beard noun usually male (but not always) usually older  (but not always) comrade who dominates conversations or meetings with their ideas or their craziness. Seemingly ignoring social cues and norms, the old beard foams at the mouth with their ideas and insists your interruptions of his interruptions are interrupting him. Recently, a blog and Facebook […]

Recently been thinking about ‘cultural appropriation’ and basically whether it is a useful conception or unimportant hand-wringing emerging and rooted in the weakness of the American left. This stems from a minor occurance at an Anarcha-Feminist conference in the UK a couple weeks ago, where, either a ‘People of Color caucus’ or individual from it mentioned that […]

Thought it would be worth posting a little about what’s going on and what I’ve been reading and researching. As I made clear in my last post, I’ve been reading The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions by Roger Keeran. Been moving pretty slowly thought it, having started it last fall. But while at […]

Came across a questionable footnote in The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions that says some stuff about the IWW. The section in the book is about the Briggs Motor strike in 1933, which was self-organized at first, but then heavily pushed by the Auto Workers Union of the CP’s TUUL. Here’s the quote: […]

Just a placeholder of sorts for books on the CPUSA I want to read eventually. American Communism and Soviet Russia by Theodore Draper (1960) Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-35 by Randi Storch (2009) The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936 by Mark Solomon (1998) Earl Browder: The Failure of American […]