On the 7th of january in 1919, the "Semana Trágica" began in Argentina when police attacked striking metalworkers in Buenos Aires, killing five, after workers set the police chief's car on fire. The city was quickly placed under martial law.
The "Semana Trágica" (Tragic Week in English, not to be confused with the Spanish Tragic Week) was the violent supression of a general workers' uprising, beginning with the attack on January 7th. In addition to the actions of the police and military, right-wing vigilantes launched pogroms against the city's Jews, many of whom were not involved, in order to suppress the rebellion.
The conflict began as a strike at the Vasena metal works, an English Argentine-owned plant in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. On January 7th, workers overturned and set fire to the car of the police chief Elpidio González. Militant workers also shot and killed the commander of the Army detachment protecting González. Following this, police attacked, killing five workers and wounding twenty more.
On the same day, maritime workers of the port of Buenos Aires voted in favor of a general strike for better hours and wages. After the police attack at Vasena, a waterfront strike began: all ship movements, and all loading and unloading, came to a halt.
Rioting soon spread throughout Buenos Aires, and workers battled with both state and right-wing paramilitary forces. Police utilized members of the far-right Argentine "Patriotic League", who targeted the city's working class Russian Jewish population, which they associated with the rebellion, beating and murdering many uninvolved civilians.
On the 11th, the city was placed under martial law, and the military restored control over the city over the next several days. Estimates of the death toll range from between 141 to over 700. The United States embassy reported that 1,500 people were killed in total, "mostly Russians and generally Jews"
La Semana Trágica - el historiador
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
- 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
Maybe? Idk because I don't think it's ever happened before, but I think nation-states might have arisen out of the specific context of Europe's fratricidal competition to rob and loot the rest of the world. And then nation-states spread, because thus far the only organizational technology that can hold off the predation of a nation state is another nation-state. Folks either developed their own nation-states or were overrun.
I guess my question would be - Could industrialization happen without the accumulation of capital, and if not, if accumulation of capital must necessarily happen alongside industrialization, would emerging capitalists inevitably create a nation-state to protect their capital?
The thing with industrialization - it creates extremely valuable capital that is not portable. Valuable resources that aren't portable generally need to be militarily defended. Nation states, with their central organization, bureaucracy, taxation systems, and broad legal authority to crush dissent and resistance, are well suited to maintaining standing armies and coercing recruitment in to armies during wartime. Soldiers within nation states are generally regarded as and treated like dogs, often in proportion to how often they're actually used; At least to my observation, the more soldier are actually used in combat operations the more poorly they're treated. Whereas in less militarized and less mercilessly authoritarian societies soldiers, or rather warriors, often hold a great deal of respect and occupy positions of political, moral, and spiritual authority. Which is to say; It's easy to bully the soldiers of a nation state in to guarding some shitty toxic mine in the ass end of nowhere, but less militarized societies with less violent central authority aren't likely to put up with that shit.
Likewise, industrialization, thus far, has required an oppressed and ruthlessly controlled proletariat, and a nation state is a good way to inflict proletarianization on people. Barring slavery, a less centralized and brutal society would not, I think, be able to enforce proletarianization.
I could see a situation where, in the absence of hostile nation state enemies, a society could proceed through industrialization in a slower, more considered, more pro-social way that didn't rely on so much brutality and violence to protect and expand capital, but that's not a situation that I think can occur in the world as it currently exists.
There's also the issue of markets - Afghanistan, as our example, would be competing with worldwide markets that are already industrialized, streamlined, optimized, integrated, and armed with both guns and lawyers. This puts it at a drastic disadvantage.
The societies that preceded the era of nation states certainly were capable of industry to the degree that the technologies were available - many kingdoms and city states had state industries that produced essential goods, or that controlled agricultural endeavors or major infrastructure. I think it's possible. But I don't think it could have happened in our world as history played out.