USA

Huey Newton introduces Revolutionary Intercommunalism, Boston College, November 18 1970

In 1970 Huey Newton gave a speech at Boston college outlining a new ideological direction for the Black Panther Party, Revolutionary Intercommunalism. Newton described his rejection of the idea of black people being an internal colony in the US, that class struggle rather than national liberation was the only route to a communist society (describing the failure of liberation movements in Africa as 'neo-colonialism'), concerns around automation and the working class, and the impossibility of a socialist state in the US (against the position of the Progressive Labor Party), although he still described Vietnam and China as partially liberated.

The Memphis sanitation strike, 1968

Submitted by Steven. on Feb 9 2018 15:53

A short history of the 1968 strike of 1300 African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, during which Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Intellectuals cheer as US moves towards global war in Syria

Submitted by Soapy on Feb 5 2018 16:03

Despite years of unqualified failure, nation's liberal intelligentsia announces full support as US redoubles its efforts in its catastrophic "war on terror"

Kate Mullany and the Collar Laundry Union

Submitted by Working Class H... on Feb 1 2018 22:32

A history of the Collar Laundry Union – the first female union in the United States – set up by Kate Mullany, Esther Keegan and others in Troy, New York in 1864.

Transnational radicals: labour dissent and political activism in Detroit and Turin (1950–1970) - Nicola Pizzolato

Investigates the entangled histories of radical auto-workers in Detroit and Turin who challenged capital, the state and the unions, and instead emphasized the importance of autonomous workers' struggle at the point of production for the destruction of capitalism. The article looks at the relations between black auto-workers of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement/League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the auto-workers, and workerist [operaismo] current in Italy.

Monopoly capitalism and the rise of syndicalism – Mark Leier

Submitted by RobynK on Jan 27 2018 03:42

A portion of the first chapter of labour historian Mark Leier’s 1990 book Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia, which may serve as an introduction to the IWW’s syndicalist ideas and practices, as well as what conditions brought about the revolutionary union in the first place.

(Note: Besides the final paragraph, ~3,200 of the last words were left out for the sake of being concise. What was left out went further in depth about how "the essence of the new system of production was [...] in increasing the division of labour and in reducing the initiative of the workers over the work process," showing how some tried to achieve this.)

The encyclopedia of strikes in American history

This comprehensive encyclopedia, edited by Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Henry Day Jr., and Immanuel Ness, is the first detailed collection of historical research on strikes in America. To provide the analytical tools for understanding strikes, the volume includes two types of essays - those focused on an industry or economic sector, and those focused on a theme.