During the 2020 election, I was doing a paper on Pittsburgh's role in the 1877 rail strike. I found a letter to Labor Standard by a German immigrant from Allegheny city from 1878 about why the Workingmen's party USA must be willing to lose elections etc rather than in its literal first election season join the capitalist Greenbacks and instantly turn against Marxism. Mother fucker put in words what I, sitting in the same city well over a century later was feeling those weeks after Bernie folded and said to vote Biden.
The thinking of the German-American Marxists on these issues is revealed in a letter from C. Saam, a socialist from Allegheny City, to the Labor Standard:
Those workmen who still hold aloof, to you I say, combine; join our ranks and help us to wage war for the emancipation of humanity, read the socialist journals which represent your interests and those of the whole human race. Reflect upon your own condition, break loose from the existing parties, whether Republican, Democratic or Greenback, all of which are exclusive- ly bent on their own interest. Beware of so-called workmen’s friends, who join our ranks with an eye to office. Until we can produce men out of our own ranks, fit to hold office, let us hold aloof from politics. But let us labor in the meantime for the organization and emancipation of the working classes, doing all we can to induce the workmen to combine [into trade unions], whereby, in my judgment, we shall do more to promote our interests than by interfering in politics before our strength is fully developed, as, for instance, in the case with our English- speaking fellow members in Allegheny Co[unty]. We Germans know full well, first that we were not strong enough to take a hand in the coming autumn elections, second having no members whom we could elect to these offices, third knowing that our election would be of no use. Those members of our organization who brought about this combination have grossly violated the fundamental principles of our constitution, or else they would not have displayed such unbounded ignorance. Let us not be precipitate-let us bide our time-it will come soon
Like this obscure letter to a long defunct paper about my hometown said everything I didn't have the ability to word properly.
We destroyed the party over this, the party leaders ran important decisions among themselves and businessmen in English, utterly ignoring the base in Pittsburgh and New Jersey of German and Bohemian only speakers. Which is why he emphasizes being German, the immigrant steel and railworkers here suffered the deadly conditions, only to never get a say, only for labor aristocrats and liberal reformers to pretend to be on their behalf. It never ended, a generation or two later they did the same to my Italian relatives. Thank god for the union, but the dems they so loyally relied on made sure they could only ever at most get a safety net for my widowed grandmother. We will only avenge all these people by continuing to fight to put forth our own to lead, funny how they found the answer of the vanguard party this early
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During the 2020 election, I was doing a paper on Pittsburgh's role in the 1877 rail strike. I found a letter to Labor Standard by a German immigrant from Allegheny city from 1878 about why the Workingmen's party USA must be willing to lose elections etc rather than in its literal first election season join the capitalist Greenbacks and instantly turn against Marxism. Mother fucker put in words what I, sitting in the same city well over a century later was feeling those weeks after Bernie folded and said to vote Biden.
Like this obscure letter to a long defunct paper about my hometown said everything I didn't have the ability to word properly.
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It's recorded in this fantastic history of the earliest American marxists. https://archive.org/details/HistoryWorkingmensPartyUS/page/n1/mode/2up?
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no problem
We destroyed the party over this, the party leaders ran important decisions among themselves and businessmen in English, utterly ignoring the base in Pittsburgh and New Jersey of German and Bohemian only speakers. Which is why he emphasizes being German, the immigrant steel and railworkers here suffered the deadly conditions, only to never get a say, only for labor aristocrats and liberal reformers to pretend to be on their behalf. It never ended, a generation or two later they did the same to my Italian relatives. Thank god for the union, but the dems they so loyally relied on made sure they could only ever at most get a safety net for my widowed grandmother. We will only avenge all these people by continuing to fight to put forth our own to lead, funny how they found the answer of the vanguard party this early
The more things change.....
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It's part of how I figured it out, so yeah, it's possible.
What was Lenin's position on cat girls?
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