#socialist history

[stillnaomi]

during WW1, the British government was so scared of socialism that it decided to build 500,000 spacious and good quality homes for the higher strata of blue collar workers, in order to avert any chance of revolution. this would give jobs to many of the demobilised troops and would stop a large section of the proletariat agitating about their living conditions. previously, the government had steadfastly refused to interfere in the freedom of the housing market, despite large sections of the population living in slum housing

as Major Astor of the Local Government Board told parliament during a debate on the scheme:

“When we talk of expense and cost let us realise that everything is comparative, and let us measure the cost of our housing proposals by the cost of Bolshevism to the country and the cost of revolution. The money we propose to spend on housing is an insurance against Bolshevism and revolution. What is the cost to the country of industrial unrest and strikes? You have only to realise the conditions under which many men and women live to realise that unrest is fully justified.”

believe it or not, revolution was seen as a serious threat. this is how the minutes record the PM, David Lloyd George, speaking in a Cabinet meeting on March 3rd 1919:

“In Europe we were now faced with very serious conditions. Russia had gone almost completely over to Bolshevism, and we had consoled ourselves with the thought that they were only a half-civilised race; but now even in Germany, whose people were without exception the best educated in Europe, prospects are very black.

“Bavaria was already in chaos, and the same fate might await Prussia. Spain seemed to be on the edge of upheaval. In a short time we might have three-quarters of Europe converted to Bolshevism. None would be left but France and Great Britain.

“He believed that Great Britain would hold out, but only if the people were given a sense of confidence—only if they were made to believe that things were being done for them. We had promised them reforms time and again, but little had been done. We must give them the conviction this time that we meant it, and we must give them that conviction quickly.”

this is what communists mean when we say that the capitalist state only gives out concessions when its power is under threat

read more about the Homes Fit for Heroes initiative and its politics

[workersolidarity]

[folk-enjoyer]

Song of the day

(do you want the history of your favorite folk song? dm me or submit an ask, and I'll do a full rundown like here)

"Bread and Roses"

Judy Collins, 1976

since its labor day i thought we could talk about some good ol' IWW labor history

in 1911, Helen Todd gave a speech about women's suffrage and ended it

"Not at once; but woman is the mothering element in the world and her vote will go toward helping forward the time when life's Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country, in the government of which she has a voice."

James Oppenheim, inspired by this speech, created the poem "Bread and Roses" in 1911, whose words would later become the lyrics for the judy collins song.

in 1912, 30,000 immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, went on strike due to poor working conditions and poor pay. this strike was led by the International Workers of the World and was comprised mostly of women. the phrase "bread and roses" was all over signs and became the slogan of the strike, with it even being called the "Bread and Roses Strike". like many strikes in the USA it was absolutely brutal for the strikers, and several people died, but they were able to win some of their demands.

in 1970, the James Oppenheim poem was put to music by mimi fariña, and then covered by judy collins. my favorite cover is by Utah Phillips in 1983 , where he explains the history of the textile strike and the meaning of the slogan

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses 🌹

[archaeologysucks]

The Madwoman of the Rockies

For those who are interested in the saga of my research into the life of my great-great-great aunt Nellie Howard Philbrick (1861-1910), aka "the Madwoman of the Rockies", author of such books as The Idiot and the Insane and Aunt Helen's Love Letters, I am in the process of compiling a google doc (currently 40 pages) of links and transcriptions of various court records, news items, journal entries, and Nellie's submissions to leftist magazines, as well as photos of her family members. It's still a long way from done, but I think it's at least coherent enough to follow. I've contacted my aunt, and she says she will send me some scanned photos of Nellie and her daughter Fae soon.

cw: involuntary institutionalizaton, child murder, suicide

Also, due to the nature of leftist politics of that era:

cw: eugenics, racism, ableism, slurs

I will reblog this post when the document is more complete.

[nickysfacts]

A reminder that Karl Marx was a strong supporter of democracy and freedom!

🇺🇸☭

[princessnastyaromanov]

The USSR was an empire and that's good actually

Western "socialists" argue back and forth and back and forth about whether the USSR was an empire (bad) or not an empire (good). It has been revealed to me through my seances that the truth is that the USSR was an empire (good)!

Through glory and conquest the USSR brought Socialism In One Country to more and more people. Socialism in One Even Bigger Country every time! International Socialism requires territorial expansion. It is only through empire that true anarchist communism can be achieved."

It is through the dialectic of science and seance that the truth is revealed. You are welcome, my little kittens.

[ichabodjane]

Happy Labor Day to Canadians and my fellow Americans!

Friendly reminder that our Labor Day is in September - instead of May 1st like pretty much all other countries that celebrate it - because the American ruling class is terrified of international worker solidarity!

May 1st was designated International Workers' Day by the American Federation of Labor in 1889 to commemorate a general American strike that started on May 1st 1886 and ended several days later with the Haymarket Affair, often cited as the culmination of the Great Upheaval, a period of strong worker organization that started in 1877.

But since this decision came from the Marxist International Socialist Congress, it was entirely TOO RED AND SCARY for the Americans. So we got our Labor Day in September.

Lameskies if you ask me but I still hope y'all enjoy your day off. If you got one at all.

[tuhkasirius]

Showed my mum around to some of our working class industrial history and took some cool pictures while at it

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[stillnaomi]

In 1917, during WW1:

The most outstanding representative of this trend [true internationalists] in Germany is the Spartacus group or the Internationale group, to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is a most celebrated representative of this trend and of the new, and genuine, proletarian International.

Karl Liebknecht called upon the workers and soldiers of Germany to turn their guns against their own government. Karl Liebknecht did that openly from the rostrum of parliament (the Reichstag). He then went to a demonstration in Potsdamer Platz, one of the largest public squares in Berlin, with illegally printed leaflets proclaiming the slogan “Down with the Government!” He was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. He is now serving his term in a German convict prison, like hundreds, if not thousands, of other true German socialists who have been imprisoned for their anti-war activities.

The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution by Lenin

the enemy is at home, even when "your" country is at war with other capitalist powers. even when those powers invade "your" country or threaten to. you are a proletarian and your enemy is the bourgeoisie and its allies

[workersolidarity]

In case you feel like being completely sickened by the deprivation of the US Empire in its quest to remain a Global Hegemon, learn how the CIA engineered the Coup against Allende in Chile on Sept. 11th 1973, or how the US recruited (surprise!) literal Nazis from Germany who escaped to South America after the War to coup and destabilize Socialist governments across the Global South.

Nothing really new. We know for instance that various Nazi Commanders, U-Boat Commanders, Panzer Corps. Staff Officers and even a Goebbels Assistant were all recruited by NATO and became Commanders-in-Chief of Allied Forces in Central Europe and AFNORTH such as Friedrich Guggenberger, Sturmfuhrer Dr. Eberhard Taubert, Johann Von Kielmansegg, Karl Schnell, Ernst Ferber, Franz Joseph Schulze, Ferdinand Von Senger und Etterline, and Hans Speidel.

All were prominent Nazi Commanders, all became prominent NATO Commanders.

NATO is an Offensive Fascist Alliance. The US is a Fascist Empire.

The US is and has been for a long long time, a Fascist Empire with a smile, with useless elections where Wall Street controls the ballot so the outcome doesn't have to be controlled.

[leflaneurbrutalistedefees]

Yooooo Paris just declared itself a commune independent from the 3rd Republic! Aldolph Thiers more like Adolph Tears armite

1850s Tumblr Dashboard Simulator

👸🏻 girlbossladyjane Follow

It really makes me sick to see people giving money to penny weeklies when Franklin's expedition STILL has not been found 😭 There are good men out there trapped in unimaginable temperatures and literally all that's needed is a little more funding for another rescue mission yet all you guys seem to care about are your vulgar little stories...

🧔🏻‍♂️ queerqueg Follow

the franklin expedition is dead as hell

👸🏻 girlbossladyjane Follow

Disgraceful thing to say but I'd expect nothing more from a M*lville fan

10,558 notes

👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 hartgrindisreal

Sorry for posting so much about Tom Gradgrind/James Harthouse from Hard Times lately. It turns out that I was getting arsenic poisoning from my wallpaper? Anyway I took a seaside stroll and I'm normal now. Check your walls y'all

#whyyy did i assume they were committing unlawful actions together like where did i even get that from lol #hard times isn't even that good by dickens standards tbh

659 notes

🎨 asherbrowndurand

Just painted this

2 notes

ss-arctic-girlie-deactivated18540927

RIP Napoleon... you may have been unable to conquer Alexander's Russia but you sure as hell conquered Alexander's bed

🖼️ preraphaelitebro Follow

HERITAGE POST

📝 shakespearesforehead Follow

How does this have less than 100k notes you could literally not avoid this post back in the 20s lol

82,170 notes

🌄 loyalromantic Follow

poets just aren't dying young in mysterious water-related incidents like they used to :/

#as useless and degenerative as i find 'the living poets' and i'm glad we're finally moving on from them #i have to agree with op in this respect

6,884 notes

🎀 thefopdiaries Follow

I finally got a daguerreotype of myself ^_^ Porcelain urn for scaling

📜 bartlebi-thescrivener

i think i hauve consumption

112 notes

🐋 whaler4life

They found oil in the ground??? WTF. THIS IS LITERALLY THE WORSTTTT. FUCK MY LIFE FOR REAL THIS TIME

11 notes

🌿 naturesnaturalist Follow

I swear this website has 0 reading comprehension skills. Darwin NEVER claimed we "evolved" from apes like if one of you guys actually bothered to open his new book you'll see all his arguments are backed up by evidence. He actually makes a lot of sense

#sure there's nuance like i don't fully agree with all of it #but his general theory of natural selection seems pretty sound imo

56 notes

🤵🏻‍♂️ byronicherotournament Follow

🙈 butchbronte Follow

Of course these are the finalists lmao this website is so predictable. Anyway vote Heathcliff if you dont i'm going to assume you're a phrenologist

📖 sapphichelenburns Follow

It's not problematic to acknowledge the fact that Heathcliff was a brute like he literally killed dogs in case you forgot. #rochestersweep

🙈 butchbronte Follow

I love the implication here that Rochester never did anything cruel either. He literally locked his wife in the attic and lied to Jane about it 😭 like that was a pretty significant thing that happened

📖 sapphichelenburns Follow

And? God forbid women do anything

#why'd you have to pit two bad bitches against each other #anyway i'm not attracted to men but still went with rochester #bc in terms of living quarters thornfield hall > wuthering heights easily

8,027 notes

👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 hartgrindisreal

Not the Russian tsar dying immediately after hartgrind became canon

#i know dickens hasn't technically confirmed it yet but like. SOMETHING was strongly implied ok #see: my previous post #dickensposting

522 notes

👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 hartgrindisreal

LORD HELP ME. THE BODY LANGUAGE. THE WAY THEY'RE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER. AHHHHHH

#this installment!!! im-- #dickensposting #i can't fucking cope #dickens wants to KILL us he wants us DEAD....

2,309 notes

⭐️ newamerican

Hi guys sorry I haven't been posting lately it's been so difficult getting to California 💀 I'm finally here now though just need to find a pickaxe and soon I'll be digging! :-) wish me luck lol

#gold #gold rush #gold rush grind #california #adventure

0 notes

[folk-enjoyer]

Song of the Day

do you want to know the history of a folk song? submit an ask or dm me and I'll cover it

"Great Historical Bum" Odetta, 1960

Originally written in 1941 by Woody Guthrie for his Columbia River Song collection. That time when Woody Guthrie (a socialist) was commissioned by the US federal government (at the recommendation of Alan Lomax. to write folk songs in support of the Coulee Dam in 1941. Woody Guthrie was in poverty at the time and was happy to finally have a job. During the month he traveled through Oregon and wrote a song every day, including "Pastures of Plenty" and "Roll on Columbia".

the lyrics in these songs, including this one, include radical themes like working-class rights, unions, anti-fascism, and anti-capitalism. because of this and because Woody Guthrie was an anti-capitalist, the songs and the documentary they were made for were ordered destroyed by the Eisenhower administration. luckily the recordings were saved by a proletarian comrade: a former employee of the Bonneville Power Administration, who decided to keep a copy of the film and recordings.

this song may also be inspired by another traditional song recorded in 1928 by Harry McClintock , but I'm not sure.

I like this cover by Odetta quite a bit. I think she does the original one justice.

[the-leegend-99]

For reference, this is the post-scriptum to this little essay I really recommend. It is about the incestuous relationship between liberalism and fascism, how little difference there is between the two, and the history of the concept of "totalitarianism", springing from a critical assessment of Nietzsche's reactionary, anti-egalitarian individualistic ideas and how they helped shape both fascism and modern liberalism.

There's little defense for those quotes from leading anarchist thinkers. All ideas spring from people's material class relations, positions, interests, and aspirations. And the fact of the matter is that these people, claiming that they were being coherent in their anarchist philosophy, routinely sided with the exploiter capitalist class instead of siding with the communist workers and revolutionaries who shared their stated dream of overthrowing capitalism (two other examples of such anarchists in the essay are famous segregationism extoller Hannah Harendt and British govt narc George Orwell).

Now what does that say about anarchism?

[nickysfacts]

Pagu helped to lead Brasil into the Modern age!🇧🇷

📖🇧🇷📚

[shinyasahalo]

Excerpt from Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

The renowned historian of sexuality Dagmar Herzorg shared a conversation with several East European men in their late forties in 2006. They told her that

"It was really annoying that East German women had so much sexual self-confidence and economic independence. Money was useless, they complained. The few extra Eastern Marks that a doctor could make in contrast with, say, someone who worked in the theater, they explained, in luring or retaining women the way a doctor's salary could and did in the West. You had to be interesting."

What pressure.